Sehwag, Harbhajan and Nehra to miss Challenger Series

Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Ashish Nehra will miss the Challenger Series in Bangalore in the second week of September. SK Nair, the secretary of the BCCI, has announced the teams for the tournament, while saying that these three players would not be playing because of injuries that would be monitored by Andrew Leipus, the Indian team's physiotherapist. Sehwag's back, Harbhajan's finger and Nehra's ankle are the zones of affliction.

The Challenger Series is an important tournament in India's calender because it is the only event in which the Test and one-day stars of the national team play alongside the cream of the domestic circuit. Top players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly rarely get time off the busy international calender to play in the Ranji Trophy or the Duleep Trophy, India's two main domestic tournaments. It thus becomes difficult to guage how good India's wannebes really are.

Three teams contest the Champions Trophy: India Seniors, India A and India B. India regulars are equitably distributed among these teams, which are generally evenly matched. From a perspective of one-day cricket, the Challenger Series is a good hunting ground for talent ready to break through to the highest level. It also provides a look at the captaincy styles of the frontrunners for the top job in the national side. While Sourav Ganguly is captaining India Seniors, Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid are captaining India A and India B respectively. John Wright coaches India Seniors while Sandeep Patil and Ashok Malhotra will look after the other teams - but the results are hardly likely to reflect on them, given that they will have had no time to groom their squads.

The squads
India Seniors Sourav Ganguly (capt), VVS Laxman, Hemang Badani, Ambati Rayudu, Sanjay Bangar, Parthiv Patel (wk), Amit Mishra, Murali Kartik, Sarandeep Singh, Zaheer Khan, L Balaji, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Akash Chopra. Coach - John Wright.

India A Anil Kumble (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Rohan Gavaskar, Mohammad Kaif, Wasim Jaffer, Sridharan Sriram, Ajay Ratra (wk), Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Mithun Manhas, Ramesh Powar. Coach - Sandeep Patil.

India B Rahul Dravid (capt), Shiv Sunder Das, Satyajit Parab, Vijay Bharadwaj, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Thilak Naidu (wk), JP Yadav, Avishkar Salvi, Siddharth Trivedi, Sairaj Bahutule, Amit Bhandari. Coach - Ashok Malhotra.