Young Karnataka batsman Manish Pandey and his fast bowling team mate R Vinay Kumar are among the three new faces named in India's 30-member list of probables for the Twenty20 World Cup to be held in the West Indies in April-May this year.
Madhya Pradesh wicketkeeper Naman Ojha, who also had a successful domestic season, is the other new face in the list announced by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary N Srinivasan after a meeting of the selection committee.
Barring these three players who have never featured in Indian squad, there is no other surprise in the list which has a host of young players like Abhimanyu Mithun, Wriddhiman Saha, Sudeep Tyagi and Abhishek Nayar.
The squad will be pruned further before the International Cricket Council's stipulated deadline for announcing the final squads for the April 30-May 16 event to be held at three venues -- Guyana, Barbados and St Lucia.
Uttar Pradesh duo Rudra Pratap Singh and Piyush Chawla along with Baroda paceman Munaf Patel, who have been off the selection radar in recent times, are back in the reckoning.
Surprisingly, the selectors chose to ignore all-rounder Irfan Pathan, who was the leading run-scorer (397 runs at 49.62) and wicket-taker (22 wickets at 18.54) for Baroda in the Ranji Trophy last season.
Twenty-year-old Pandey, who had a prolific domestic season with the bat, has been rewarded for his consistent performances. The youngster also has the distinction of being the first Indian to score a century in the Indian Premier League (IPL), where he represents Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Like Pandey, his team mate Vinay Kumar has also forced his way into the list by virtue of his performance in domestic cricket this season.
Naman Ojha, a wicketkeeper who also has the reputation of being a good batsman at the top of the order, has been chosen ahead of Parthiv Patel in the list which has three wicketkeepers -- Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Wriddhiman Saha being the two other.
Twenty six-year-old Saha, who hails from Bengal, made his Test debut against South Africa in Nagpur after Rohit Sharma got injured in the morning of the match and has now got an opportunity to be in the reckoning for the Twenty20 World Cup.
Although Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan and Gautam Gambhir are recuperating from injury, the selectors have named them in the squad as no player can be picked in the final squad without being in the initial list of probables.
Ishant Sharma, who has not been a regular in the shorter formats of the game in recent times, has been included in the list.
Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, S Sreesanth, Sudeep Tyagi, Rohit Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Wriddhiman Saha, Naman Ojha, Piyush Chawla, Abhimanyu Mithun, Manish Pandey, R P Singh, Munaf Patel, Murali Vijay, Vinay Kumar, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Virat Kohli and R Ashwin.
