MUMBAI, India, CMC – Pre-tournament favourites India have named only two uncapped One-Day International players in a 30-man preliminary squad rolled out yesterday in preparation for next year’s Cricket World Cup.
Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane are the only new faces among the training squad comprising players that have been in the ODI mix in recent years.
Pujara is a 22-year-old right-hander who played his lone Test in October while Rahane, an exciting top order batsman, is yet to play international cricket.
Prolific 37-year-old Rahul Dravid, who has scored nearly 11 000 runs in ODIs, has been left out along with seamer Irfan Pathan.
“As you know there are no big surprises. This is a ‘probables’ team and everyone selects himself,” said chairman of selectors Kris Srikkanth.
“There is one more month to go to select the final team and we will sit down and think calmly before finalising the team.”
India, joint hosts along with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for the February 19 to April 2 tournament, will contest Group B along with West Indies, England, South Africa, Bangladesh, the Netherlands and Ireland.
SQUAD – MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Ishant Sharma, Vinay Kumar, M Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Saurabh Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan, Parthiv Patel, R Ashwin, Wriddhiman Saha, Dinesh Karthik, Shikhar Dhawan, Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Cheteshwar Pujara, Pragyan Ojha, Praveen Kumar.
