Wednesday, September 27 2006 12:49 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Zaheer Khan's return to the national side receives a boost Tuesday (26 Sep, 2006) when he is picked to play in the Challenger Series to be held in Chennai from October 1 to 4.

The national selectors, while selecting the India Blue, Green and Red teams here, also include former captain Sourav Ganguly and one-day discard V V S Laxman.

Zaheer will play for the Red team to be led by Venugopala Rao while Ganguly and Laxman feature in the Green team to be skippered by Mohammad Kaif.

The five-man selection panel headed by Kiran More decides to leave out Anil Kumble, giving the leg-spinner more time to recover from his shoulder injury.

Three other players who are coming back from long injury lay-offs to be selected are fast bowlers Ashish Nehra and Laxmipathy Balaji and left arm spinner Murali Kartik.

India captain Rahul Dravid would lead the Blues, Board Secretary Niranjan Shah says while announcing the squads.

Thirty-nine players, 13 each for the three teams, are picked by the selectors as against of the earlier norm of having only 12 per team.

The selectors, with Dravid attending the meeting, retains all the 30 probables selected for the ICC Champions Trophy barring Kumble and added 10 more names.

"We wanted to give Anil more time to recover (from his shoulder injury). We want him to be 100 per cent fit for the future series," says More who has finished his term and will be replaced when the new committee is formed at the BCCI's AGM Wednesday (27 Sep, 2006).