Dravid makes shock comeback to India's ODI squad

Rahul Dravid

Bangalore, August 6 (Yahoo! Cricket): Former India captain Rahul Dravid was the surprise inclusion in India's 16-man squad for the one-off Twenty20 international and the five-match one-day international series that will follow the Test series against England.

Dravid, who has scored 10765 runs at an average of 39.43 in 339 ODIs, last turned out for India in colored clothing during the Champions Trophy in South Africa in 2009. The experienced batsman has been the best Indian batsman on show in the first two Tests even as the rest of the famed batting line-up has struggled to cope with the seaming conditions in England, and this could probably be the reason Dravid has been included in the ODI squad by the selection committee headed by former skipper Krishnamachari Srikkanth.

As expected, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh have been excluded because of injuries the pair sustained during India's humiliating 319-run defeat at Trent Bridge to go down 0-2 in the four-Test series and are out of action for four and three weeks respectively. While Yuvraj hasn't played an ODI since being named Man of the Tournament in the 2011 World Cup; Harbhajan has been far below his best in West Indies as well as England.

Swashbuckling opening batsman Virender Sehwag, who has recently regained fitness after his shoulder surgery in May, has been named vice-captain of the limited overs squads.

T20 & ODI Team Squad: MS Dhoni (capt and wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Parthiv Patel (wk), Amit Mishra, R Ashwin, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar, Munaf Patel, Vinay Kumar.