Ajit Agarkar has won a three-way race to be named as Ashish Nehra's replacement in India's 15-man squad for the one-day triangular tournament in South Africa, starting October 5. The decision was reached after watching each of the three candidates - Debasis Mohanty, Rakesh Patel and Agarkar, as well as a confused Nehra - bowling in a short net session. "Agarkar bowled the best of the three in the nets. That's why we chose him", declared the selection committee chairman Chandu Borde. "We all know what he is capable of."

With seven successive Test zeroes against Australia, Agarkar had become a metaphorical - and literal - sitting duck for the media, but he has always enjoyed the vocal support of his captain. Today was no different, as Ganguly jumped to the defence of Agarkar's allround skills - (he has a batting average of 15.90 in one-dayers).

The announcement ended a chaotic week of fitness reports and misreports as VVS Laxman, his replacement Hemang Badani, and Zaheer Khan all pulled out of the tournament because of injuries. And then Nehra pronounced himself fully fit the same evening that Dr Anant Joshi, the Board's doctor, ruled him out of the tournament. After a somewhat bizarre fitness test on Saturday afternoon, where Nehra easily kept pace with his competitors, team physio Andrew Leipus confirmed that he would be held back for precautionary reasons.

"I had given him an eight-week programme in Sri Lanka on the advice of a leading Australian orthopaedic surgeon. And he is just reaching that final phase of rehabilitation, which is very important. He needs another couple of weeks to finish his training programme. If we stop it here, it could probably reopen his injury and might set him back for another couple of months," said Leipus. "So I am being tough with him. But I am being fair thinking about his long-term career. We will rest him for the one-day series and get him back for the Tests."

The decision left Ganguly scowling in dissent, but provided him with just the leverage to bring back Agarkar into the squad.

The squad:

Sourav Ganguly (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Shiv Sunder Das, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Jacob Martin, Yuvraj Singh, Reetinder Sodhi, Deep Dasgupta (wicketkeeper), Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Harvinder Singh

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com India

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