India's 30-member squad for Champions Trophy selected

The 30-member Indian pre-squad for the Champions Trophy has been announced and there have been a couple of surprises in the same. Rahul Dravid, who has not played a single ODI since October 2007 makes a reappearance while all-rounder Irfan Pathan is conspicuous by his absence.

Dravid had been out of the selection radar ever since the former chief selector, Dilip Vengsarkar had dropped him from the ODI squad in 2007 after he had had a rather low-scoring series against the Aussies.

Also in the squad is the presence of Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Suresh Raina, and Munaf Patel, all of whom had been left out of the team to West Indies due to various reasons.

Some of the other players include Abhishek Nayar, M Vijay, S Badrinath, Ashish Nehra, and Ravindra Jadeja, who were also a part of the team to the West Indies, and some others like R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Dhawal Kulkarni, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar Singh, Wriddhiman Saha, Pankaj Singh. >

Irfan Pathan’s bad run of form means that he will need to get back his swing that he seemed to have lost after the initial burst which had seen him become only the second Indian to bag a hat-trick in a test match.

S.Sreesanth also loses out due to his troublesome back which has seen him being out of the squad ever since the previous year’s IPL.

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