India bank on youth for BD tri-series, Asia Cup
Yusuf, 25, the elder brother of left-arm seamer Irfan Pathan, is a hard-hitting batsman and off-spinner who was part of India’s winning squad at World Twenty20 in South Africa in September.
Ojha, a 21-year-old from Hyderabad, is widely regarded as the country’s best young left-arm spinner and forced his way into the national squad after a successful domestic season.
Yusuf replaces star batsman Sachin Tendulkar, who opted out of both tournaments to recover from a groin injury in time for the Test and one-day tour of Sri Lanka from mid-July.
Ojha comes in for Harbhajan Singh, the off-spinner who was banned for five one-dayers after being found guilty of slapping national team-mate Shanthakumaran Sreesanth during an IPL match last month.
The selectors once again ignored veterans Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as they continued to look ahead to the next World Cup in 2011.
Ganguly and Dravid, both aged 35, are two of the seven batsmen in the world to have scored more than 10,000 one-day runs.
Left-hand batsman Suresh Raina, 21, who last played a one-dayer in January 2007, pipped reserve wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik for the last batting slot.
Seamer Rudra Pratap Singh returns to the squad after missing India’s one-day engagement in Australia in February when Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men defeated the hosts 2-0 in the tri-series finals.
The tri-series in Bangladesh, also featuring Pakistan, will be played in Dhaka from June 8 to 14 with each side playing the other once in the league before the final.
Pakistan will host the six-nation Asia Cup from June 24 to July 6. The other teams are Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong.
Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Piyush Chawla, Pragyan Ojha, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Rudra Pratap Singh, Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar.—AFP