Sourav Ganguly urges Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh to fight for India return

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly has backed the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan to make a comeback into the national team but said that they need to be "hungry" for a return.

All the three players are along with Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh are out of favour these days as young guns such as Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Bhuvaneshver Kumar and R Ashwin have performed well in their absence.

"No player is completely out of the team. In 2011, the Indian team looked incomplete without these players. And now they are out of the team. So you cannot say what will happen tomorrow," Ganguly told a television channel.

"They are all very good players. They have won the world cup, Test matches, Test series. So if they have hunger inside them, they can surely be back. They just need to focus on cricket, train hard, be fit and make a comeback.

"They are all great players. Sehwag is one of the greatest openers ever in Indian cricket. Zaheer is closing in on 300 ODI wickets. Look at the performance of Yuvraj Singh in World Cups, be it in 2007 or 2011. He has been the best. So you can't keep such players out for a long time. They would want to do better than what they have already done," he added.

Ganguly also endorsed Gambhir's decision to join English county side Essex, saying his focus should be on playing as many matches possible.

"It's a good decision, because it's an off season in India. At his age, he should play as much cricket as possible, and find form," the 41-year-old said.

"He is only 30 now. So there is still 10 years of cricket left in him. Every player goes through a rough patch. I hope he learns from this and plays some good cricket to stage a comeback," he said.