CHENNAI, India, (Reuters) – India named Rahul Dravid  in the preliminary squad for the Champions Trophy in South  Africa in September, raising hopes of the senior batsman’s  return to the one-day format.

Former captain Dravid’s last one-day international  appearance came in October 2007 before selectors pitched for  youth with an eye on the 2011 World Cup to be staged in the  sub-continent.

However, the selection committee yesterday named Dravid to  the probables along with Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag  after a young Indian batting unit struggled against short  pitched bowling at last month’s Twenty20 World Cup in England.

Tendulkar, who does not play Twenty20 internationals, opted  out of the recent one-day tour of the West Indies while Sehwag  missed the Caribbean trip due to a shoulder injury that had  ruled him out of the World Twenty20 event.

India, who exited at the Super Eights stage in the World  Twenty20, won the four-match series in the West Indies 2-1 after  the final game on Sunday was abandoned due to heavy rain.

The 30-man squad will be reduced to 15 before the  tournament.

Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam  Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul  Dravid, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Abhishek Nayar, Ishant  Sharma, Zaheer Khan, Rudra Pratap Singh, Praveen Kumar,  Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik,  Munaf Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Murali Vijay, Amit Mishra,  Ajinkya Rahane, Dhawal Kulkarni, Subramaniam Badrinath, Ashish  Nehra, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha, Pankaj  Singh.