July 08, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 22, 1428

MUMBAI, July 7: Indian batting stars Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly have opted out of the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa in September, selectors announced here on Saturday.

“I think they wanted to give a chance to youngsters. I got a call from (captain) Rahul who said they were opting out of the tournament,” chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar said after India named a 30-man preliminary squad.

The trio are currently in England for the Test and one-day series.

Each has scored more than 10,000 runs in One-day Internationals.

The final 15-man squad will be announced next month.

Batsman Virender Sehwag and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh were named after being ignored for the England tour.

The selectors also announced a 16-man India ‘A’ squad for the tours of Zimbabwe and Kenya starting later this month.

Twenty20 probables:

Virender Sehwag, Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammad Kaif, Dinesh Karthick, 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, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Joginder Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Niranjan Behera, Anirudha Srikkanth, Praveen Kumar.

India ‘A’ squad: Mohammad Kaif (captain), Parthiv Patel, Robin Uthappa, Cheteshwar Pujara, Subramaniam Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Rajesh Pawar, Mahesh Rawat, Piyush Chawla, Arjun Yadav, Pragyan Ojha, Irfan Pathan, Vikram Raj Vir Singh, Vijaykumar Mahesh, Pankaj Singh, Neeraj Patel.—AFP