Dinesh Mongia to captain Rest of India

Dinesh Mongia has been chosen to lead Rest of India in the Irani Trophy match against Mumbai in ten days time. Mongia was left in the lurch before the start of the Champions Trophy when a communication botch-up had resulted him being wrongly told that he was the replacement for Sachin Tendulkar.

Zaheer Khan was also selected, after being left out of the Indian squad for the three one-day tournaments, while Murali Kartik, the left-arm spinner, gets another chance to stake his claim.

Aakash Chopra, Gautam Gambhir and Dheeraj Jadhav were the three openers chosen. Apart from having a very good domestic season last year, both Jadhav and Gambhir had impressed during India A's tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya. Parthiv Patel named the wicketkeeper.

Shib Shankar Paul, the medium-pacer from Bengal, was also rewarded for his consistency over the past season - apart from a fine India A tour.

The match will be played at Mohali between September 22 and 26.

Rest of India
1 Aakash Chopra, 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Dheeraj Jadhav, 4 Dinesh Mongia (capt), 5 Sridharan Sriram, 6 Ambati Rayudu, 7 Parthiv Patel (wk), 8 Murali Kartik, 9 Shiv Shankar Paul, 10 Zaheer Khan, 11 Yogesh Golwalkar, 12 Venugopal Rao, 13 Joginder Sharma, 14 Siddharth Trivedi