Up against a young Maharashtra side, Shukla & Co look to shake off controversies and log an outright win at Pune

After a roller-coaster ride in the run-up to the Ranji Trophy, the Bengal cricketers will finally get down to business at the 22-yard strip on Tuesday when they take on Maharashtra in Pune in the Ranji Trophy opener. Far too much water has passed under the bridge this season for the Bengal boys to go into the tournament unnerved.

The preparatory phase began with the CAB unceremoniously dumping local coach Utpal Chatterjee in favour of a more celebrated name — Roger Binny — who appears to be taking his own sweet time to get ‘acclimatized’ to the Maidan way of life.

The next spectacle was the forced patch-up between the team’s only reliable pacers Ranadeb Bose and Ashoke Dinda, which can’t be presumed complete till the two quicks produce results in the coming days.

After that came a series of more problems. It started with the Bengal team’s disastrous campaign in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 meet in Dhanbad. Bengal lost thrice in three days. What was worse was that the debacle sparked off a collision between the think-tank and some senior players. It’s no coincidence that the senior guys at the receiving end of things were the ICL rebels.

This state of affairs was followed by the confusion and bad blood surrounding the reappointment of the mercurial Laxmi Ratan Shukla as skipper. It needed CAB president Jagmohan Dalmiya’s intervention to avoid selectors exchanging blows at a heated selection meeting at the BC Roy Club House office.

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