Ganguly, Laxman selected for Challenger Series

MUMBAI: Zaheer Khan's return to the national side received a boost on Tuesday when he was picked to play in the Challenger Series to be held in Chennai from October 1 to 4.

The national selectors, while selecting the India Blue, Green and Red teams here, also included former captain Sourav Ganguly and one-day discard V V S Laxman.

Zaheer will play for the Red team to be led by Venugopala Rao while Ganguly and Laxman featured in the Green team to be skippered by Mohammad Kaif.

The five-man selection panel headed by Kiran More decided to leave out Anil Kumble, giving the leg-spinner more time to recover from his shoulder injury.

Three other players who are coming back from long injury lay-offs to be selected were fast bowlers Ashish Nehra and Laxmipathy Balaji and left arm spinner Murali Kartik.

India captain Rahul Dravid would lead the Blues, Board Secretary Niranjan Shah said while announcing the squads.

Thirty-nine players, 13 each for the three teams, were picked by the selectors as against of the earlier norm of having only 12 per team.

The selectors, with Dravid attending the meeting, retained all the 30 probables selected for the ICC Champions Trophy barring Kumble and added 10 more names.

"We wanted to give Anil more time to recover (from his shoulder injury). We want him to be 100 per cent fit for the future series," said More who has finished his term and will be replaced when the new committee is formed at the BCCI's AGM on Wednesday.

"We wanted to mix the players after last year's experience at Mohali when India B shocked the seniors team. We found a few youngsters from that tournament like Sreesanth, Chawla and others," he pointed out.

C Raghu, an all rounder from Karnataka, has done well of late, More said, pointing out his century against Western Australia at Bangalore recently.

"Praveen Kumar is another all-rounder who bats at any number and played a stellar role for UP (Ranji Champions) last year with a haul of 45 wickets," More said.

Tanmay Srivastav's consistent show for the India under-19 squad this year has earned him his spurs for rubbing shoulders with the stars of Indian cricket, according to More.

"We went by the feedback given by under-19 coach Lalchand Rajput and junior selection panel chief Praveen Amre. The same holds good for Ravindra Jadeja," More indicated.

The three teams would have Ian Fraser, the national team's biomechanics expert, Lalchand Rajput and Robin Singh as coaches during the tournament, Shah said. 

Talking about his tenure in the selection committee, More said it was an enjoyable four-year stint and all decisions that were taken were with the consensus of all five members of the committee based on inputs from the coach and captain.

"I got great support from the BCCI and I wish the Indian team a bright future," he said.

The teams:

India Blue: Rahul Dravid (captain), Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Wasim Jaffer, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel, Rudra Pratap Singh and Ravindra Jadeja.

India Red: Venugopal Rao (captain), Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Subramaniam Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Tejinder Pal Singh, Dinesh Kaarthick (wk), Vikram Rajvir Singh, Shantakumaran Sreesanth, Ramesh Powar, Zaheer Khan, Murali Kartik and C Raghu.

India Green: Mohd Kaif (captain), Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Hemang Badani, Suresh Raina, Tanmay Srivastav, Piyush Chawla, Parthiv Patel (wk), Sourasish Lahiri, Ashish Nehra, Laxmipathy Balaji, Praveen Kumar and Reetinder Singh Sodhi.