Ranji Trophy: Chhattisgarh Announce Amandeep Khare As New Captain for 2024 Season

Durg, Madhya Pradesh-born Right-Hand batter Amandeep Khare has been announced as the new captain of the Chhattisgarh team for the upcoming 2024 season of India’s top-tier Domestic First class tournament, the Ranji Trophy.

Amandeep Khare has been appointed as Captain of a Ranji team for the first time in his career and the 26-year-old will be hoping to kick start his career as Captain in style with the brand new season set to start from January 5 onwards.

Chhattisgarh in their opening match will take on Assam, most probably at their home ground in Raipur, Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium. Amandeep Khare will become the first cricketer from the Chhattisgarh region to have played in the U-19 Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh.

Chhattisgarh will be playing 4 league matches at home and 3 games away from home in a round-robin format starting from January 5. They are among those teams that have never reached the Finals of the Ranji Trophy ever.

But with a new captain in place, the state team will be hoping to at least reach the ending phases of the tournament as they would want to play in the final this year. Last year they finished in the 5th spot with 19 points from 7 matches, including 3 wins and 4 losses in Elite C group.

This year, they have been placed in Group B along with some strong teams like Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Mumbai, and Uttar Pradesh. Chhattisgarh will take on Bihar in their 2nd Ranji Trophy fixture and will also travel to Bengal in the subsequent fixture.

The Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh in an official press release revealed their new captain, Amandeep Khare, the fixtures, and the entire 17-man squad for the Ranji Trophy 2024 edition. Last season (2023-24), Saurashtra came out on top and went on to beat Bengal in the finals to win the first-class trophy for the 2nd time in 3 seasons.

Jaydev Unadkat’s side after winning the toss had elected to bowl first with Bengal only scoring 174 in the 1st innings. Saurashtra in response, scored 404 runs and bowled out Bengal for 241 runs to receive a target of just 14 runs.

Saurashtra chased down the total in the 1st session of Day 4 to claim a one-sided victory over Manoj Tiwary’s Bengal at the iconic Eden Gardens.

With Over 2000 Runs In First Class Cricket, Amandeep Khare Looks Set For Chhattisgarh Captaincy

26-year-old Batter Amandeep Khare will be leading a young yet experienced Chhattisgarh side. Most of the onus will be on Amandeep as a batter who has scored 2823 runs in 42 Ranji matches with an average of 45.53. His highest score is 210 and has 10 Centuries and 8 half-centuries to his name since making his debut in October 2016.

Chhattisgarh Squad: Ajay Mandal, Anuj Tiwari, Ashish Singh Chouhan, Ashutosh Singh, Eknath Kelkar (WK), Gagandeep Singh, Jivesh Butte, M Ravi Kiran, Rishabh Tiwari, Sanjeet Desai, Shashank Chandrakar (WK), Shashank Singh (VC), Amandeep Khare (C), Shubham Singh, Saurabh Majumdar, Sumit Ruikar and Vasudev Bareth.