Paras Dogra a season campaigner made his debut for Himachal Pradesh at the start of the new millennium, and now he is leading Jammu and Kashmir in a dream campaign. J&K is placed second ahead of Mumbai, having won three in five games.
With all the attention on Mumbai stars, he is keeping the dressing room calm and telling them they can keep on doing the good work and take some more inspiration from the 2014 team who won by four wickets against heavyweights Mumbai.
“We are all confident, we did really well so far. Obviously they are stars and have achieved so much but our players are confident in their own skills. It is cricket and we just want to keep things simple and play good cricket,” Dogra said.
J&K will be without star pacer Rasikh Salam, who according to the skipper is injured but the state of the injury is unknown. However they have prolific wicket-taker Auqib Nabi to spearhead the attack and put pressure on Ajinkya Rahane and Co.
“Bowling is our strength and they are in a good frame of mind. We have done well with the bat also and fielded well.”
When reminded about the historic 2014 win at Wankhede stadium, Dogra who was then part of Himachal Pradesh then, and has played 140 First Class Games and is nearing 10000 runs, said. “Yes guys talk about that, Khajuria was there and he did well. We are well prepared after training in Mumbai for the last ten days. We did 3-4 net sessions at Air India ground and 5-6 sessions at BKC,” he said.
Shubham Khajuria had scored a century and half century at Wankhede and he has been in great form this season. Seamer Umar Nazir is another player who played in that game in 2014 and is part of the current squad.
