Rahul, Sachin, Saurav opt out of Twenty20 team

Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly have opted out of the inaugural twenty20 cricket World Cup in South Africa as the national selectors today announced a list of 30 Indian probables including Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh.

Paceman Irfan Pathan, who has also been out of the Indian team for long, has been named in the list that has a number of young players who have performed consistently at domestic level.

Mohammad Kaif and Suresh Raina have also got the nod from the selection committee while Neeraj Patel (Gujarat), Karan Goel (Punjab), Abhishek Jhunjhunwala (Bengal), Cheteshwar Pujara (Saurashtra), Niranjan Behera (Orissa), Anirudha Srikkanth (Tamil Nadu) and Praveen Kumar (Uttar Pradesh) were some of the youngsters in the list.

The final squad for the championship to be held in South Africa from September 11 to 24 would be selected on August 6 or 7, Cricket Board secretary Niranjan Shah said.

The list of probables: Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammad Kaif, Dinesh Kaarthick, 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, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Joginder Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Niranjan Behera, Anirudha Srikkanth, Praveen Kumar.