Notable absentees in the team are Indian skipper Rahul Dravid, Sri Lanka’s lethal spinner Mutthiah Muralitharan and Pakistan batsman Younis Khan.
The Jayawardene-led team, that will take on Africa, will include Tendulkar, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Dhoni and Harbhajan.
DHAKA: Five Indians, including Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag are among five Indian players in the Asian one-day cricket team to play three matches against Africa in the Afro-Asian Cup to be held next month at Chennai and Bangalore. Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh are the other Indians in the 14-member squad to be led by Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene, Asian Cricket Council chief executive Syed Ashraful Huq announced on Friday.
The team also includes five players from Sri Lanka, three from Pakistan and one from Banlgadesh.
Notable absentees in the team are Indian skipper Rahul Dravid, Sri Lanka’s lethal spinner Mutthiah Muralitharan and Pakistan batsman Younis Khan.
Dravid opts out
While Dravid opted out seeking rest in view of India’s rigorous schedule of 14 months of continuous cricket, Murali and Younis have their assignments in English County cricket, Haq said. The matches would be played in Banglore on June 6 and in Chennai on June 9 and 10.
The selectors — AFN Farooque (Bangladesh), Chetan Chauhan (India), Mohsin Khan (Pakistan) and Lalith Kaluperuma (Sri Lanka) — also announced the mens’ and women’s twenty-20 teams for taking on Africa. The Twenty20 matches will be played in Bangalore on June 5.
Chauhan said Sourav Ganguly’s name was considered but “finally we decided to go with youngsters”.
There was no dearth of fireworks at the media conference with the Bangladesh journalists virtually bombarding the four selectors and Huq for the inclusion of only one player from their country in the ODI team after the neighbouring nation’s impressive performance in the World Cup.
Questions were also raised about the inclusion of Shoaib Akhtar and Harbhajan Singh in the squad, with some scribes pointing out that they were not even in the Pakistan and Indian teams respectively.
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