Mumbai medium-pacer Ajit Agarkar was on Sunday named to replace left-arm quick Ashish Nehra who had been ruled out of the team for the South Africa tri-series after the final fitness tests.

Agarkar won the nod ahead of Orissa's Debasish Mohanty after Indian captain Sourav Ganguly reportedly insisted on having the former.

Most selectors were initially said to be in favour of Mohanty. The five wise men might have decided to go along with the captain to avoid a controversy after the one involving Nehra.

The Delhi quick continued maintaining his fitness even after the BCCI appointed sports medicine expert Dr Anant Joshi certified him as less than completely fit after a fitness test at the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai. Ganguly agreed with Nehra's view that a decision should only be taken after the final fitness tests in Mumbai.

On Saturday, the Delhi quick was able to do all the drills without any obvious discomfort but despite this he was ruled out as he had not completed his rehabilitation programme.

"I gave 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," Indian physio Andrew Leipus told the Times of India on Saturday.

"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.

"He is going to go through another fitness test in a couple of weeks to see how he is bowling. But I have no doubts that he will be fit for the Tests. He is actually bowling freely at the moment. But there is still a little stiffness which means the injury has not fully healed," Leipus told the paper.

Top guns, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, being deemed fit for the tour though meant that the Indian side for the one-day tri-series would still one of the strongest in recent times.

Kenya is the third team in the competition.

The Indian team that leaves for South Africa on Monday then is as follows:

Sourav Ganguly (captain), Rahul Dravid (vice-captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Shiv Sunder Das, Virender Shewag, Yuvraj Singh, Jacob Martin, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Deep Das Gupta (wkt), Harbhajan Singh, Harvinder Singh, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad and Ajit Agarkar.

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