Wriddhiman Saha

Calcutta: Bengal wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha, who made his Test debut against South Africa in Nagpur earlier this month, has been named in the 30-member list of probables for the World Twenty20 to be held in the West Indies from April 30 –May 16 this year.

The selectors Thursday named three new faces — talented Karnataka batsman Manish Pandey, his teammate and fast bowler R. Vinay Kumar and Madhya Pradesh wicket-keeper batsman Naman Ojha — among the probables.

Bowlers Rudra Pratap Singh, Munaf Patel and Piyush Chawla, out of favour in recent times, were also named in the list.

Twenty-year old Pandey, who boasts of being the first Indian to score a century in the Indian Premier League, has been rewarded for an impressive display in the domestic circuit.

Naman, a handy top-order batsman, has edged out former India ’keeper Parthiv Patel from the list which includes three other ‘keepers — India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik and Wriddhiman.

Naman has played 16 domestic Twenty20 matches and has an average and strike rate of 23.50 and 125.09 respectively.

He had also struck a 167 against Railways in the Ranji Trophy this season.

The trio of Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh and Gautam Gambhir, who are recuperating from injury, were also included in the list.

But a prominent name missing from the list is that of all-rounder Irfan Pathan.

Irfan has been reportedly suffering from a back problem.

The left-arm medium pacer, however, led both the runs and wickets tally for Baroda in the Ranji Trophy.

While he had scored 397 runs at an average of 49.62 in five matches, he had also scalped 22 wickets.