Date:09/07/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/09/stories/2008070956632100.htm

Sport - Cricket

Probables for Champions Trophy

Mumbai: Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and V.V.S. Laxman are not among the initial 30 probables for the ICC Champions Trophy scheduled to be held in Pakistan in September.

Last summer in Australia, National selectors Venkatapathy Raju and Ranjib Biswal had dropped hints that the selection committee would be looking for young talent for the future one-day tournaments.

Dravid (333 matches, 11,363 runs) had played his last one-day match against Australia at Nagpur (Oct. 2007), Ganguly (311 matches, 10,585) against Pakistan in Gwalior (Nov. 2007) and Laxman (86 matches, 2,338 runs) against South Africa in December 2006.

Munaf not included

Seamer Munaf Patel has not been included but Sachin Tendulkar, who fashioned India’s first one-day series win in Australia, figures in the list.

The probables:

M.S. Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Rohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, Robin Uthappa, Suresh Raina, Piyush Chawla, R.P. Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar, Manpreet Gony, Pragyan Ojha, Parthiv Patel, Dinesh Kartik, S. Badrinath, Mohammed Kaif, Manoj Tiwary, Abhishek Nayar, Pankaj Singh, Murali Kartik, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Yusuf Pathan and S. Sreesanth. — Special Correspondent