Mohammed Kaif to lead India at Under 19 World Cup

The All India Junior Selection Committee of the BCCI announced a 14 member squad for the Under 19 World Cup today. UP's Mohammed Kaif and Punjab's Reetinder Sodhi (the only members to have played in the competition before) have been appointed captain and vice captain respectively. The squad includes two players not in the original list of 25 probables announced by the Board on December 21: Punjab's Ravneet Ricky and Hyderabad's Arjun Yadav.

The team consists of two openers: Ricky and Manish Sharma (Punjab); six middle order batsmen: Kaif, Sodhi, Yadav, Yuvraj Singh (Punjab), Venugopala Rao (Andhra) and Niraj Patel (Gujarat); wicket keeper Ajay Ratra (Haryana); three new ball bowlers: Sailab Srivastava (UP), Mritunjay Tripathi (UP) and Mihir Diwakar (Bihar); and two specialist spinners, both left armers: S Vidyuth (Tamil Nadu) and Anup Dave (Rajasthan).

Five players can also lay claim to being all rounders: Sodhi (medium pace), Yuvraj (left arm spin), Rao and Patel (off spin) and Tripathi. There are a few probables who could consider themselves unlucky to be overlooked based on their showing in the recently held CK Nayudu Trophy. Gautam Gambhir topped both the batting averages and the run aggregate. Amit Deshpande effected the most dismissals for a keeper and also had a respectable batting average. And left arm spinner Rakesh Dhurv had the best figures of all the specialist spinners on display. But statistics can lie and let's only hope that the selectors have perceived something special in the chosen ones through their all seeing eye.

TNCA Joint Secretary G Nandakumar will be the team manager and Roger Binny the coach. The team leaves for Colombo on January 6 for the competition which begins January 11. India is grouped with New Zealand, Bangladesh and Holland.