Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Dravid among Champions Trophy probables


Rahul Dravid is the surprise inclusion among India's probables for the ICC Champions Trophy in September this year. The Indian selectors picked a long list of 30 players for the tournament, to be held in South Africa in September, including the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan.

Dravid played his last ODI in October 2007 against Australia in Nagpur. He averages 39.49 from 333 games with a strike-rate of 71.22 and is the third Indian to score more than 10,000 runs in ODIs.

His inclusion follows the recent struggles of Indian batsmen against short-pitched bowling, in the ICC World Twenty20 & in the West Indies, where Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir and Yusuf Pathan were troubled by bouncers from the West Indian and England fast bowlers.

Dravid played a key role in the success of Royal Challengers Bangalore during the IPL's second season, scoring 271 runs at a good strike-rate of 115.81 as the team finished runners-up in the tournament held in South Africa.

All the 16 members of the team touring the West Indies were also included, as are the regulars who missed that due to injury and fatigue concerns - Tendulkar, Sehwag, Zaheer and Suresh Raina.

Among the players who failed to make in the list of 30 probables are medium-pacers Irfan Pathan and S Sreesanth. Irfan's last ODI was against Sri Lanka in February, Sreesanth is struggling with his back injury for more than a year since the first IPL.

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

0 comments:

Post a Comment