The Hindu : Sport : Ganguly keeps his place

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Ganguly keeps his place

Special Correspondent

Badrinath and Amit Mishra get the nod

MUMBAI: Sourav Ganguly has retained his place in the Indian squad for the first two Tests against Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Middle-order batsman S. Badrinath and leg-spinner Amit Mishra are the new faces in the list of 15 names announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) here on Wednesday.

India will take on the Aussies in the first Test at Bangalore from October 9 to 13, then move on to Mohali for the second Test from October 17 to 21.

Ganguly, a member of the Indian team which lost to Sri Lanka in the third Test at Colombo, was not picked in the Rest of India squad for the Irani Cup 2008 match last week by the previous selection panel headed by Dilip Vengsarkar.

The former India captain and left-handed batsman, averaging 41.74 in Tests from 109 matches, has been picked in the squad by the new selection committee, chaired by K. Srikkanth (the other members are Yashpal Sharma, Surendra Bhave, Raja Venkatraman and Narendra Hirwani).

The media was handed a written list of names by the attendant in the foyer outside the Cricket Centre, the Board headquarters. Badrinath, who replaced the injured Sachin Tendulkar for the Irani Cup, breaks into the Test squad for the first time.

The India ‘A’ captain is an additional option for India coach Gary Kirsten and captain Anil Kumble to choose from. Haryana leg-spinner Mishra gained favour ahead of Piyush Chawla; the former’s last international outing for India was five years ago in the 2003 TVS Cup one-day tournament at Dhaka.

BCCI’s new president Shashank Manohar and secretary N. Srinivasan met the new selectors’ panel before the selection committee meeting.

The team

Anil Kumble (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, R.P. Singh, S. Badrinath, Amit Mishra.

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