Three more juniors head Down Under

Rudra Pratap Singh, an 18-year-old left-arm pacer from UP had drawn rave reviews from Sourav Ganguly during the national probables camp in Bangalore where he was a special invitee. The 6-ft tall bowler from Rae Bareilley had a stint at the MRF Pace Foundation and had attended u-19 and u-21 national camps. He also toured Sri Lanka with the Indian u-17 team.

Twenty-year-old Vikram Rajvir Singh took 28 wickets in five Ranji Trophy matches this season which included a 10-wicket haul. Punjab coach Intikhab Alam reckons Vikram to be 8216;8216;the fastest8217;8217; in the country.

Of the 15 players who had been to Australia under the scholarship scheme earlier, Kaif 7 Tests, 87 ODIs, Sriram 8 ODIs, Shiv Sundar Das 23 Tests, 4 ODIs, Parthiv Patel 19 Tests, 14 ODIs, L Balaji 8 Tests, 28 ODIs and Gambhir 8 Tests, 5 ODIs have already represented the country at the highest level.

The roll of honour

2000: Mohammad Kaif, Sridharan Sriram, Shiv Sundar Das.
2001: Deepak Chougule, Vinayak Mane, Parthiv Patel.
2002: Lakshmipathy Balaji, Gautam Gambhir, Thilak Naidu.
2003: Raiphi Vincent Gomez, Udit Brijesh Patel, Siddharth Trivedi.
2004: Shikhar Dhawan, Suresh Raina, Y Venugopala Rao.