Tendulkar, Saurav and Rahul Dravid have been excluded from the list of 30 probables for the Twenty20 World Cup to be held in South Africa in September.
MUMBAI: India will have a new captain at the Twenty20 cricket World Cup in South Africa with Rahul Dravid opting out of the inaugural edition of the tournament, alongwith seasoned campaigners Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, to make way for youngsters.
The three stalwarts, in their 30s, made their decision known to the Cricket Board before the national selection committee met to choose a list of 30 probables, which included out-of-favour players such as Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan and Mohammad Kaif.
Suresh Raina and Munaf Patel, who have also been out of the team for some time now have been named among the probables announced by the BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah here.
Yousuf Pathan, brother of Irfan, has also found a place in the preliminary squad for the September 11 to 24 event.
While most of the current India players have expectedly found a berth in the provisional squad, the national selectors also included a number of young players who have performed consistently at the domestic level.
Gujarat batsman Neeraj Patel, Punjab opener Karan Goel, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala (Bengal), batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara of Saurashtra and S Anirudha of Tamil Nadu, all rounders Niranjan Behera of Orissa and Praveen Kumar of Uttar Pradesh were some of the youngsters chosen in the list.
The final squad for the championship would be selected on August 6 or 7, Shah said.
National selection committee chief Dilip Vengsarkar said Dravid called him from Hove to inform that the three senior players were opting out of the twenty20 World Cup.
"I got a call from Rahul today morning who said on behalf of all the three players that they were opting out of the Twenty20 World Cup," Vengsarkar said.
Asked why the trio, who have played tremendous amount of cricket at the highest level, had opted out, the 'Colonel' said "I think they wanted to give chance to youngsters." With the big three opting out and two other seniors -- Anil Kumble and V V S Laxman -- not in the running, the selectors had the option to induct a number of youngsters.
The list of probables:
Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammad Kaif, Dinesh Kaarthick, Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir, Yousuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Manoj Tiwary, Neeraj Patel, Karan Goel, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Rudra Pratap Singh, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Joginder Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Niranjan Behera, S Anirudha, Praveen Kumar.
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