Newly appointed chief coach KP Bhaskar is confident that a young Unmukt Chand would prove to be a good leader in the absence of seasoned Gautam Gambhir as young Delhi would take on last year's surprisepackage Assam in the opening encounter of the Ranji Trophy, here tomorrow.
Unmukt will be leading Delhi for the first time as regular skipper Gautam Gambhir is on national duty.
"We will definutely miss Gambhir's experience with the bat as well as in the field. But Unmukt has proved that he is a fine leader having led India U-19 as well as India A. So I have confidence in his leadership abilities," Bhaskar told PTI on the eve of the match.
The former Delhi legend said that it is the rain factor that is worrying him.
"There was heavy downpour today and that's why we didn't have nets. Hopefully the rain stays away tomorrow and we get to start the match on time. It would be nice to start on a winning note," the coach said stating that he would like to go with five bowlers.
It is expected that Delhi will play both their left-arm spinners Manan Sharma and Varun Sood.
While Unmukt is likely to have Rishabh Pant as his opening partner, the middle-order will feature Milind Kumar, Mohit Sharma, Nitish Rana and Vaibhav Rawal. Pradeep Sangwan, Navdeep Saini and Parvinder Awana are likely to be three-pronged pace line-up.
For Assam, their new coach Sunil Joshi will have to depend on his new ball pair of Krishna Das and Arup Das while the batting line-up consists of skipper Gokul Sharma, outstation players like Amit Varma, KB Arun Karthick. Local players like Tarjinder Singh, Sarupam Purkayastha, Shib Sankar Roy are also capable of significant contributions.
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