Cricket: Shukla to lead Bengal's preseason tour to Sri Lanka

Veteran all rounder Laxmi Ratan Shukla will lead a 15 member Bengal squad to Sri Lanka for their upcoming preseason tour, team management said on Monday.

Pragyan Ojha, who has signed for Bengal this season, has been kept in the squad but the management is willing to let him go and play for English county side Sussex with whom he is currently in talks.

Newly-appointed coach Sairaj Bahatule will also travel with the team to the island country on August 16.

All rounder Sourasish Lahiri was also confirmed as the skipper on Monday for the Buchi Babu Tournament scheduled to be held in Chennai.

The squad for the Sri Lanka tour:

Laxmi Ratan Shukla (c), Manoj Tiwary (v-c), Abhimanyu Easwaran, Avishek Das, Sudip Chatterjee, Sreevats Goswami (wk), Pankaj Shaw, Naved Ahmed, Pragyan Ojha, Ashok Dinda, Veer Pratap Singh, Aamir Gani, Sourav Sarkar, Alok Pratap Singh and Pradipta Pramanik.

Squad for Buchi Babu Tournament:

Sourasish Lahiri (c), Koushik Ghosh, Samik Karmakar, Sandipan Das, Writtick Chatterjee, Ajmer Singh, Debabrata Das, Ritwick Roy Chowdhury, Deepak Prasad, Anurag Tiwari, Amit Banerjee, Mukesh Kumar, Pritam Chakraborty, Ravi Kant Singh, Sayank Ghosh and Priyank Bengani.