Yuvraj, Kaif and Badrinath to captain

Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif and S Badrinath have been picked to lead India Blue, Green and Red respectively in this year's NKP Salve Challenger Trophy.

The series, to be held from October 23-26 in Cuttack, will provide a chance for the likes of Robin Uthappa, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Piyush Chawla and L Balaji to impress the national selectors. Amit Mishra, who was called up out of the wilderness for the first two Tests against Australia, is in the Blue team. RP Singh, also part of India's Test squad, has found a place in the Green team.

Swapnil Asnodkar, the Goa opener who impressed during the IPL, has been dropped after a poor run with India A during the recent tri-series against Australia and New Zealand.

Each team will play once against each other to decide the finalists.

Teams:

India Blue: 1 Yuvraj Singh (capt), 2 Ajinkya Rahane, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Virat Kohli, 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6, Ravinder Singh, 7 Irfan Pathan, 8 Yogesh Takawale (wk), 9 Ashok Dinda, 10 Pradeep Sangwan, 11 Amit Mishra, 12 Arjun Yadav, 13 Siddarth Trivedi, 14 R Ashwin.

India Red: 1 S Badrinath (capt), 2 M Vijay, 3 F Fazal, 4 Manoj Tiwary, 5 Rohit Sharma, 6 Jaydev Shah, 7 Abhishek Nayar, 8 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 L Balaji, 11 Piyush Chawla, 12 Vinay Kumar, 13 Monish Parmar, Parthiv Patel (wk)

India Green: 1 Mohammad Kaif (capt), 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Naman Ojha (wk), 4 Suresh Raina, 5 Cheteshwar Pujara, 6 Saurabh Tiwary, 7 Yusuf Pathan, 8 Laxmi Ratan Shukla, 9 Manpreet Gony, 10 RP Singh, 11 Pragyan Ojha, 12 Rajat Bhatia, 13 Abhinav Kumar, 14 Pankaj Singh