Ashok Dinda and Pragyan Ojha involved in an ugly spat before Ranji Trophy game

Ashok Dinda who has earlier been involved in other controversies with his teammates and opposition, again showed his bad demeanour ahead of Bengal’s Ranji Trophy clash against Tamil Nadu in Rajkot. During the football session, Dinda started provoking Ojha by insinuating that Ojha was an outsider in the Bengal dressing room. Despite trying to control his emotions initially, Ojha lost control when Dinda repeated the same thing time and time again. Both men grabbed each other by the collar and had to be separated by teammates. 

Ojha, who has been born and brought up in Bhubaneswar, initially played cricket in Hyderabad before transferring to Bengal to play in the Ranji Trophy in 2015. CAB president Sourav Ganguly invited Ojha to play for Bengal, but the move was not taken well by many of the Bengal players.

However, this is not an isolated incident as Dinda engaged himself in an altercation with Ojha during the Bengal-Odisha Ranji Trophy clash last year as well. The game is remembered for Odisha being all-out for 37 runs in the second innings on a pure mine-field where Dinda claimed seven wickets in the second innings. 

Dinda to has been engulfed in controversies over the year, the biggest one being an incident involving former Bengal pacer Shib Shankar Paul and Randeb Bose during the 2009 Vijay Hazare Trophy.