Challenger Trophy Teams Named; Harbhajan, Gambhir, Badrinath To Captain Team

Following the Irani Cup, another important domestic cricket tournament will upon Indian cricket in the form of the Challenger Trophy. The Indian selectors have made a few interesting choices even giving Harbhajan Singh the chance to shine in the domestic one day tournament.

Harbhajan Singh

The Challenger Trophy is usually earmarked as a must watch domestic cricket tournament simply because it involves a fair mix of experienced Indian cricketers alongside some of the young hopefuls with three teams in the fray.

Significantly Harbhajan Singh has been named as one of the three captains that will lead their teams in the tournament. Harbhajan Singh has not been preferred for the first two ODIs against England at home, which has caused a great deal of speculation on the off spinner’s future as India’s premier spinner in India’s ODI team although he was part of India’s ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 winning squad

Here are the three teams that will participate in the Challenger Trophy:

India Blue:

S Badrinath (captain), M Vijay, Paul Valthaty, Manish Pandey, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Mandeep Singh, Saurabh Tiwary, Irfan Pathan, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, YV Krishanatry, Prashant Parameshwaran, Pradeep Sangwan, Tanmay Srivastava

India Green:

Harbhajan Singh (captain), Robin Uthappa, S Anirudha, T Suman, Mohnish Mishra, Ishank Jaggi, Mohammad Kaif, CM Gautham (wk), Sarabjit Ladda, Iqbal Abdulla, Abhimanyu Mithun, Samad Fallah, Ishwar Choudhary, Sumit Narwal

India Red:

Gautam Gambhir (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Abhinav Mukund, Ambati Rayudu, Ashok Menaria, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Jalaj Saxena, Piyush Chawla, Bhargav Bhatt, Pankaj Singh, Jaydev Unadkat, TP Sudhindra, Yusuf Pathan, RP Singh

For Gautam Gambhir, this will be his first appearance in Indian cricket - apart from the Champions League Twenty20 2011 - since suffering the concussion in England in the fourth Test.