Punjab’s hard-hitting top-order batter Mandeep Singh has been named as the captain of the North Zone squad for the upcoming Duleep Trophy.
Mandeep Singh Named as North Zone Captain
Duleep Trophy is a domestic first-class cricket competition that was started by the Board of Control for Cricket in India in the 1961–62 season. North Zone and West Zone are the most successful teams as they won 18 titles each so far.
Each zonal team is a composite team of cricketers who play for the Ranji Trophy state/city teams situated in that region of India. North Zone will include Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, and Services while East Zone includes Assam, Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Tripura.
Mandeep Singh – the highest run scorer in the 2015 Vijay Hazare Trophy was bought by the Delhi Capitals in the IPL 2022 mega auction. He made his Twenty20 International (T20I) debut against Zimbabwe at Harare Sports Club on 18 June 2016.
The West Bengal-born Manoj Tiwary will lead the East Zone team, while Jharkhand’s Virat Singh has been named as the vice-captain of the team. Tiwary was the leading run-scorer for Bengal in the 2018–19 Vijay Hazare Trophy, with 366 runs in nine matches.
Tiwary has played 119 first-class games and scored 8752 runs which include 27 centuries and 35 half centuries while Mandeep Singh played 70 first-class games and scored 4620 runs which includes 11 centuries and 24 half-centuries.
Notably, veteran India pacer Ishant Sharma has made himself available for the Ranji Trophy.
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North Zone squad
Yash Dhull (Delhi), Dhruv Shorey (vice-captain, Delhi), Manan Vohra (Uttarakhand), Mandeep Singh (captain, Punjab), Himanshu Rana (Himachal Pradesh), Akash Vashisht (Himachal Pradesh), Anmol Malhotra (wk, Punjab), Mayank Dagar (Himachal Pradesh), Pulkit Narang (Services), Navdeep Saini (Delhi), Siddharth Kaul (Punjab), Jagjit Singh (Uttarakhand), Nishant Sindhu (Himachal Pradesh), Qamran Iqbal(Jammu and Kashmir), Vikas Mishra (Delhi).
East Zone squad
Manoj Tiwary (captain), Sudip Kr Gharami, Anushtup Majumdar, Abhishek Porel (wk), Shahbaz Ahmed, Ishan Porel, Akash Deep (all Bengal), Virat Singh (vice-captain), Nazim Siddiqui, Kumar Kushagra, Shahbaz Nadeem (all Jharkhand), Mukhtar Hussain, Riyan Parag (Assam), Mani Shankar Mura Singh (Tripura), Shantanu Mishra (Odisha).
