PTI

Bangalore, Aug 9: Sourav Ganguly's prolonged bid to make a comeback to the national squad received a boost on Wednesday with the former captain being named among 30 probables for the ICC Champions Trophy tournament to be held in India later this year.

The Bengal left-hander, left in the wilderness since the Pakistan tour in January this year, found a place in the list after the national selectors decided to pick the maximum 30 players instead of the 22 or 25 as widely speculated.

Veterans Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman also found themselves back into the one-day fold after being ignored from the shorter version of the game of late.

Left-arm paceman Zaheer Khan enhanced his prospects for a comeback with a berth in the preliminary short-list, announced by Cricket Board Seceretary Niranjan Shah after a meeting of the selection committee here.

While all the members of the Sri Lanka bound team expectedly figured in the list, Tamil Nadu middle-order batsman S Badrinath and Mumbai batsman Rohit Sharma were the two new faces.

The final 14-member squad for the October-November tournament would be announced by September 7.

Probables: Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Mohd Kaif, M S Dhoni, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Anil Kumble, Dinesh Mongia, R P Singh, Suresh Raina, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Venugopal Rao, Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, S Badrinath, S Sreesanth, Tejinder Pal Singh, VRV Singh, Dinesh Karthick, Parthiv Patel, Zaheer Khan, S S Paul and Piyush Chawla.