Abhishek Nayar & Ajinkya Rahane to play in Champions Trophy

Mumbai, July 8: In a move consistent with their recent policy for limited overs matches, the national selectors on Tuesday ignored former captains Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly while naming 30 Indian probables for the ICC Champions Trophy in September.

Sachin Tendulkar was the only player from among the Fab Four who found a place in the list announced by Cricket Board secretary Niranjan Shah after the selection panel's meeting in Mumbai.

Yuvraj Singh and Irfan Pathan, axed from the 16-strong Test squad for the Sri Lanka tour, expectedly found berths in the probables list.

Also included were national under-19 captain Virat Kohli of Delhi, Saurashtra all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja and Mumbai youngsters’ all-rounder Abhishek Nayar and batsman Ajinkya Rahane.

Both Dravid, who is 35, and Ganguly - celebrating his 36th birthday on Tuesday, have failed to secure places in the ODI squads after the home series against Australia and Pakistan respectively held late in 2007.

The duos, with a combined experience of over 600 ODIs, were left out of the triangular series won by India for the first time in Australia.

The pair then failed to find a place in the last two one-day tournaments played by India - the tri-series in Bangladesh last month and the Asia Cup that concluded in Pakistan last Sunday - after playing in the T20 Indian Premier League as iconic players for their respective outfits.

The decision of the selectors to ignore the claims of this vastly experienced pair of batsmen, each of whom has scored over 10000 runs in ODIs, has virtually ended their glittering careers in the shorter forms of the international game.

Tendulkar, who masterminded India's historic victory Down Under, was expectedly named in the probables list which has to be pruned at least a month before the start of the tournament which is scheduled for September 11 as per the International Cricket Council's rules and regulations.

The probables: Mahendra Singh 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 Singh Gony, Pragyan Ojha, Parthiv Patel, Dinesh Kaarthick, S Badrinath, Mohammed Kaif, Manoj Tiwary, Abhishek Nayar, Pankaj Singh, Murali Kartik, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Yusuf Pathan and S Sreesanth.

Indian Express.