India grouped with New Zealand, Bangladesh and Holland

The Indian probables for the deceptively named "Under-19" World Cup to be held from January 11-28 in Sri Lanka have been announced by the national junior selection committee chaired by Rajinder Goel. Although several of the probables are above 19, they are eligible under the quaint tournament rules according to which anyone born after 1 September 1980 qualifies to play. The 16 nation event is being held after two years. England are the holders having beaten New Zealand in the final of the last World Cup in South Africa in January 1998.

India is grouped with New Zealand, Bangladesh and Holland. The top two teams in each of the four groups qualify for the Super League while the bottom two in each group advance to the Plate Championship. The probables list has two veterans of the previous edition in Reetinder Sodhi and Mohammed Kaif. The surprise omission from the list is Laxmi Ratan Shukla who ironically was in the list of probables for the senior World Cup earlier this year.

Among the 25 are two openers: Manish Sharma and Amit Deshpande (who also keeps wickets), eleven middle order batsmen: Kaif, Sodhi, Yubraj Singh (although both Sodhi and Yubraj have hit hundreds while opening the batting for Punjab in the Ranji Trophy this season neither is a regular opener), Aamir Hashmi, Subhamoy Das, Rasmi Das, Sushant Manjrekar, Manish Mishra, Gautam Gambhir, Niraj Patel and Venugopala Rao, three wicketkeeper batsmen: Pradeep Chawla and Pallav Vora beside Deshpande, five new ball bowlers: Sailab Shrivastava, Mritunjay Tripathi, G Chaitra, Mihir Diwakar and Amit Suman and four spinners: S Vidyuth, Anup Dave, Rakesh Dhurv and CM Shyam (of whom the first three are left armers while Shyam is a leggie). Of this list only Patel, Rao, Sodhi and Tripathi can realistically be called all rounders while Gambhir and Mishra are part time spinners.

The probables will assemble at Chennai on December 26 for a ten day camp under the supervision of the selectors and coach, former Test cricketer Roger Binny.