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| April 3, 2003 | Thursday | Muharram 30, 1424 |
Tendulkar and Dravid miss Dhaka series
MUMBAI, April 2: Hand injuries have forced India’s top batting stars Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid to miss the one-day triangular series starting in Dhaka next week.
Selectors on Wednesday included four uncapped players in a 15-man squad for the nine-day tournament starting next Friday. South Africa and hosts Bangladesh are the other teams.
The selectors made five changes to the side which reached the World Cup final last month where they lost to Australia by 125 runs.
Saurav Ganguly remains captain, and John Wright coach after the cricket board extended his contract by two months, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary, Karunakaran Nair, told reporters.
Left-arm paceman Ashish Nehra, who is awaiting ankle surgery, was left out and bowlers Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble opted out, Nair said.
“Tendulkar has a hand injury and he has asked for time to take rest,” he said. “Vice-captain Dravid also injured his hand at the World Cup which will need three to four weeks to heal.”
Tendulkar scored a record 673 runs during the recent World Cup.
Nehra will be ruled out of competitive cricket for five months.
Nair said Nehra will have surgery in South Africa on April 17 on a left ankle injured in the World Cup against Namibia.
Despite a heavily strapped ankle, the young bowler produced superb spells to finish the tournament with 15 wickets at an average of 19.26.
Uncapped Gautam Gambhir and Abhijit Kale, both batsmen, medium-pacer Avishkar Salvi, leg-spinner Amit Mishra and recalled off-spinner Sarandeep Singh are the changes from the Cup side.
Gambhir, 21, is a left-handed opener with a range of shots. His consistency is shown in his 36 first class games where he has scored 3,175 runs at an average of almost 60 with 10 hundreds.
Salvi, a 21-year-old new ball bowler, models his bowling action on Australia’s Glenn McGrath while Mishra, 20, is seen as an eventual successor to Kumble in the Test side.
Kale, an experienced middle-order batsman, gets his chance after Vangipurappu Laxman, a surprise World Cup exclusion, was ruled out due to a back injury.
Dashing opening batsman Virender Sehwag has been named vice-captain.
Squad: Saurav Ganguly (captain), Virender Sehwag (vice-captain), Gautam Gambhir, Mohammad Kaif, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Parthiv Patel, Sanjay Bangar, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Amit Mishra, Avishkar Salvi, Sarandeep Singh, Abhijit Kale.—Reuters/AFP
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