Bengal cricket’s mess: As Deep as it gets

Something or the other — mostly untoward stuff — keeps dogging Bengal cricket these days,and the latest ones to join the already long ‘hallowed’ list are Deep Dasgupta’s bombshell to Jagmohan Dalmiya and the CAB administration’s needless attack on Bengal team’s hapless manager Russi Jeejeebhoy.

Time for me to go: Deep tells Dalmiya
Strange how Deep Dasgupta’s fortunes fluctuated between extremes in just a matter of days. When the Bengal team travelled to Maharashtra for the Ranji Trophy opener,all eyes were on Deep — will he really succeed Laxmi Ratan Shukla as the skipper in the event of a failure in Pune? That was the buzz,and it looked like the former ICL rebel was seriously shaping up for the top job.

Today,after the second day’s play in Bengal’s third Ranji match at Mysore,Deep is literally facing a dead end. Having scored a lone fifty in the first match,the stumper-opener has struggled with the bat. And now faced with the prospect of the selectors’ axe ahead of the Saurashtra tie at home,he has decided to take the honourable exit — pulling out just in time to escape ignominy. In a startling move,the former India stumper discussed his wobbly position in Bengal’s scheme of things with CAB president Dalmiya,and informed him that he will take a break after the ongoing match.

So,with the likes of Sourav Ganguly,Rohan Gavaskar and Shukla himself queuing up for Bengal’s next match — at home against Saurashtra — Deep is all set to voluntarily pull out,as things stand.

Not a bad decision on the cricketing front. Wriddhiman Saha is Bengal’s best bet behind the stumps on any given day. And with the un-droppables back in the playing XI,Deep is matured enough to have figured the math out that he’s the one certainty who will be left without a chair when the music stops.

But a sudden bombshell of a decision like this midway into a crucial away match can always distract the team’s focus. Manoj Tiwary is leading the side in this match — again,a laudable decision on cricketing logic,but a mighty risky one considering that half the team is full of prima donnas vying for that prestigious captaincy. When the dust settles (or let’s say when Karnataka are done dusting Bengal off their sleeves!),it will be interesting to see how well Dalmiya & Co’s decision to catapult Tiwary to the captaincy went down with the likes of Ranadeb Bose,or say Saurasish Lahiri.

Jeejeebhoy: CAB’s scapegoat
Bengal manager Russi Jeejeebhoy must be asking himself at the end of every gruelling day these days — what have I done to deserve this? First came the snorter from Bengal pacer Ranadeb Bose. The experienced player,who hardly made the ball do much in the Baroda match at Eden,made up for the sorry performance by knocking down Jeejeebhoy with a bouncer after the inconsequential last day’s play.

Unhappy over the Bengal manager’s naïve attempt to put a lid on his heated war of words with Baroda match’s stand-in skipper Saurasish,Ranadeb tore Jeejeebhoy apart in a stinging complaint to Dalmiya.

And now,in Mysore,as the Sambaran Banerjee-led selection panel is seeking an explanation for why they were left out of the loop (over Tiwary captaining against Karnataka),the CAB happily stamped the marker on Jeejeebhoy’s forehead and fired at him point blank. The Bengal manager,clearly the CAB’s Scapegoat of the Week,has been asked to formally explain for the surprising decision on the captaincy and why everybody concerned (read: selectors) wasn’t kept in the know of things.

“Jeejeebhoy has been asked to submit a written report,explaining the rationale behind the captaincy decision,which seems to have been taken without following standard proceedings and decorum. Once the match gets over,we will sit over the report,” a top CAB functionary told The Indian

Express today.

Deep’s almost gone. Is Jeejeebhoy is also on his way out? And is Bengal on its way down to where it miraculously came out from last season? The answers will unfold in the day’s to come,or maybe they are already there in the power corridors of the CAB — correction,the Messy Cricket Association of Bengal.