Young Karnataka batsman Manish Pandey and his fast bowling teammate R. Vinay Kumar were 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-batsman Naman Ojha, who also had a successful domestic season, was the other new face in the list announced by BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan after a meeting of the selection committee.
Barring these three players who have never featured in Indian squad, there was 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 ICC 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.
Twenty-year-old Pandey, who had a prolific domestic season with the bat, has been rewarded for his consistent performances. Pandey has the distinction of being the first Indian to score a century in the Indian Premier League, where he represents Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Like Pandey, his teammate Vinay Kumar has also forced his way into the list by virtue of his performance in domestic cricket this season.
Squad: M.S. 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
