The National Cricket Academy Bengaluru of the BCCI has selected nine players from Meghalaya to attend the North East Senior Men’s camp starting next month.
The camp will be held in Guwahati from 8 April to 2 May. The nine are Akash Kumar Choudhury, Swarajeet Das, Jaskirat Singh Sachdeva, Dippu Sangma, Abhishek Kumar, Ram Gurung, Kishan Lyngdoh, Raj Biswa and Aryan Borah.
The All India Senior Men’s Selection Committee of the BCCI has selected these nine players from Meghalaya on the basis of their good performance during the 2023-24 domestic tournaments, namely the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (senior men’s T20), Vijay Hazare Trophy (senior men’s one day) and Ranji Trophy (senior men’s first-class).
The latter tournament saw Meghalaya reach the final of the Plate Group for the first time where they met the much more experienced Hyderabad at the latter’s home ground.
The nine were responsible for match-winning performances this year. Kishan, who led an all-local Ranji Trophy team that did not utilise guest players, racked up 695 runs in seven matches with the first double century for a Meghalaya domiciled player in first-class cricket. A little down the list was Raj, who hit two centuries in his 441 runs. Within touching distance of him was young Jaskirat, who delivered on the faith shown in him by the selectors to amass 422 runs, which included three half-centuries.
Among the bowlers, Akash missed the first two matches as he was recovering from injury but made up for that with 34 wickets in the following five fixtures, placing him 10th nationally but second-best (out of the Top 10) in terms of average (13.76) and third-best by strike rate (28.58). Further down was late call-up Aryan, who took just one wicket against Hyderabad but bamboozled the batters in the two previous games for a total of 23 scalps, and the ever reliable Dippu, who bagged 17 wickets across the tournament.
Swarajeet also provided yeoman service with bat and ball as a useful all-rounder, while Ram Gurung had a terrific debut Ranji season. Abhishek has played in the senior team before but this season was utilised in the U-23 tournaments where his standout bowling performances have caught the eye of the national senior men’s selectors.
