All-rounder Shahbazz Ahmed is back in the 17-man Bengal squad for the Ranji Trophy quarter-final against Jharkhand at Eden Gardens from 31 January to 4 February.
After making five appearances for Bengal in the current Ranji Trophy season, Shahbaz joined the Indian squad for the ODI series against New Zealand. He recorded his 215 carries at an average of 53.75 while picking his 15 wickets for Bengal in five games.
Bengal lead Elite Group A in the league stage after 4 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws. Uttarakhand was the other team in the group and qualified for Round 8. Incidentally, Bengal and Jharkhand also met in the quarter-finals of the last Ranji Trophy in Bangalore. Bengal marked his 7-7 mammoth 773 in the first essay and advanced to the semi-finals with a lead once.
Both Bengal and Jharkhand advanced to the quarterfinals after losing their last group stage game. Bengal suffered his seven-wicket loss to Orissa, while Jharkhand lost by nine wickets to Karnataka.
THE SQUAD
Manoj Tiwary (captain), Abhimanyu Eswaran, Anustup Majumdar, Sudip Gharami, Suvankar Bal, Shahbaz Ahmed, Abishek Porel, Ishan Porel, Akash Deep, Kazi Junaid Saifi, Pradipta Pramanik, Geet Puri, Pritam Chakraborty, Sumanta Gupta, Ankit Mishra, Akash Ghatak and Durgesh Dubey.