India's domestic cricket team Bengal and Pakistan Super League (PSL) franchise Lahore Qalandars are all set to take part in the Global T20 Namibia Series organized by Cricket Namibia.
The Global T20 Namibia series will start in September, where four teams will take part in the tournament, with Namibia and a fourth team coming from South Africa.
The Lahore Qalandars, the defending champions of the PSL, have agreed to participate in the tournament, while the second is Bengal, along with hosts Namibia.
Bengal has already announced a 16-man squad for the upcoming Global T20 Namibia series, which will be captained by Abhimanyu Easwaran. Bengal’s regular players like Shahbaz Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Ishan Porel, and Writtick Chatterjee have been named in the 16-member squad.
Debabrata Das, the joint secretary of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), told ESPNCricinfo: “The broadcasters for the tournament came before our president (Avishek Dalmiya) and invited us. We took the opportunity to play six-seven games before the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (India’s domestic T20 tournament for men) because we can get to play against a World Cup team.”
He added, “The ambition is that there are several young players who are playing in local cricket in Bengal and performing fantastically with respect to T20s. So we are sending mostly those young guys so that we can make our team for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. The team we are sending abroad, this is a new team. We want to see how they play, how they tackle this tournament.”
Here’s the Bengal squad for the Global T20 Namibia series –
Abhimanyu Easwaran (captain), Abhishek Das, Ritwik Roy Chowdhury, Ranjot Singh Khaira, Shreyansh Ghosh, Karan Lal, Writtick Chatterjee, Shreyan Chakraborty, Shahbaz Ahmed, Abhishek Porel (wicketkeeper), Suprodip Debnath (wicketkeeper), Ishan Porel, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Soumyyadip Mondal, Ravi Kumar
Standby: Ankur Paul, Pradipta Parmanik, Debopratim Haldar, Siddharth Singh
