Four from Orissa taken in East Zone Deodhar team

Four young players from Orissa were today included in the 15-member East Zone team for the Deodhar Trophy Tournament to be held at Cuttack from March 13 to 18. The zonal selection committee, which met at Guwahati, picked stumper Haladhar Das, opening batsman Natraj Behera, allrounder Rakesh Mohanty and medium-pacer Preetamjit Das from Orissa, who finished runners-up in the East Zone Vijay Hazare Trophy tournament earlier this week at Kolkata. The committed chose five from zonal champions Bengal and two each from Jharkhand, Assam and Tripura. Bengal all-rounder Manoj Tiwari was named the captain. Orissa’s Test discard Shiv Sundar Das, leading batsmen Subit Biswal, Rashmi Ranjan Das and pace spearhead Debasis Mohanty were ignored by the selection committee, which included chairman Raja Venkat, Sambaran Banerjee (both Bengal), Subhasish Bhuyan (Orissa), Nagesh Singh (Assam), Jodh Singh (Jharkhand) and Sourav Dasgupta (Tripura). East Zone team: Manoj Tiwari, Wridhman Saha, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Ranadeb Bose, Ashok Dinda (all Bengal): Haladhar Das, Rakesh Mohanty, Natraj Behera, Preetamjit Das (all Orissa): Sourav Tiwari, Ishank Jagi (both Jharkhand): Dhiraj Goswamy, Deepak Sharma (both Assam): Tushar Saha, Rana Dutta (both Tripura).