Mohanty, Raju among 25 probables for Australian series

Orissa medium pacer Debasish Mohanty and veteran left arm spinner from Hyderabad Venkatapathy Raju are among the 25 probables selected for the conditioning camp to be held at Chennai from February 6-11 and February 16-20 before the home series against the Australians.

BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele, told reporters in Mumbai on Monday after picking the probables and the three one-day teams for the Hero Honda-NKP Salve Challenger Trophy, that the Indian A team to play the three-day match against Australia from February 17-19 either at Hyderabad or Nagpur, would be selected on the second day of the camp.

"The Indian team for the first Test match will be selected during the three-day match", Lele added. The first foreign coach for the Indian team, John Wright of New Zealand, selection committee chairman Chandu Borde and skipper Sourav Ganguly also attended the meeting. Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar will lead the Indian Seniors, India A and India B teams respectively in the Challenger Trophy to be held at Chennai from February 11 to 15.

Probables for the camp: Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, S Ramesh, Shiv Sunder Das, VVS Laxman, Dinesh Mongia, Hemang Badani, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Debasish Mohanty, Aashish Nehra, Venkatesh Prasad, Surinder Singh, Nayan Mongia, Vijay Dahiya, Rahul Sanghvi, Murali Kartik, Balaji Rao, Sharandeep Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Venkatapathy Raju, Sunil Joshi and Mohammed Kaif.

The teams for the Challenger Trophy:

India seniors: Sourav Ganguly (capt), SS Das, Yuvraj Singh, Hemang Badani, VVS Laxman, Virendra Shewag, Vijay Dahiya (wk), Aasish Kapoor, Debasish Mohanty, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan and Sunil Joshi.

India A: Rahul Dravid (capt), S Ramesh, S Sriram, Jacob Martin, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Nayan Mongia (wk), Venkatesh Prasad, Ajit Agarkar, Iqbal Siddique, Rahul Sanghvi and WD Balaji Rao.

India B: Sachin Tendulkar (capt), JP Yadav, Mohammed Kaif, Dinesh Mongia, Robin Singh, Amay Kurasiya, Sukwinder Singh, Nikhil Chopra, Rakesh Patel, Surinder Singh, Dodda Ganesh and Vikram Rathour (wk).

Challenger Trophy schedule: February 12: India seniors vs IndiaA, February 13: India seniors vs India-B, February 14: India A vs India B. Final on February 15.