Mahendra Singh Dhoni [Images] was on Tuesday named skipper of the Indian team for the one-day international series against Australia and Pakistan, starting September 29.

• Schedule: Australia in India

The 26-year-old, who is currently leading the team in the Twenty20 World Cup, succeeds Rahul Dravid [Images], who recently sprang a surprise by relinquishing the captaincy, saying he wants to concentrate on his batting.

The announcement was made by Board of Control for Cricket in India secretary Niranjan Shah at a press conference in Mumbai.

The selectors, however, did not name the captain for the Test team, with chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar saying a decision would be taken at a later stage.

"Dhoni is a good captain and it is the right time to groom him," Vengsarkar said.

Yuvraj Singh [Images] was named vice-captain.

Dhoni holds the unique feat of captaining India in an international match without ever captaining his home teams -- Bihar and Jharkhand -- in the Ranji Trophy or any other important domestic cricket match.

In fact, he had the experience of captaining a team only once, before leading India in the ICC [Images] [Images] Twenty20 Championship, when he led an Indian eleven against England [Images] [Images] 'A' at Northampton recently.

Dhoni is the fifth youngest player to captain India in one-day internationals after Sachin Tendulkar [Images] [Images] (23 years 126 days), Kapil Dev [Images] [Images] (23 years 249 days), Virender Sehwag [Images] [Images] (24 years 178 days) and Ravi Shastri (24 years 245 days).

He will also be the third wicketkeeper to lead India in a one-day international after Syed Kirmani (one match) and Rahul Dravid [Images] (five matches).

Team for first three ODIs vs Australia:
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain)
Yuvraj Singh (vice captain)
Rahul Dravid
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly [Images]
Robin Uthappa
Gautam Gambhir [Images]
Dinesh Karthik
Harbhajan Singh [Images]
Irfan Pathan [Images]
Zaheer Khan [Images]
S Sreesanth [Images]
Ramesh Powar
R P Singh
Piyush Chawla

The following players were named in the India 'A' team that will play South Africa 'A' at Ahmedabad, Baroda and Rajkot on September 26, 28 and 30, 2007 respectively.

Mohammad Kaif (captain)
Parthiv Patel (vice captain)
Cheteshwer Pujara
Karan Goel
Manoj Tiwary
Suresh Raina
S Badrinath
Praveen Kumar
Praghyan Ojha
Ishant Sharma
Yo Mahesh
Pankaj Singh
Arjun Yadav
Abhishek Nair
Anirudh Srikanth

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- Captaincy in India has shelf life: Dravid
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- Dhoni is my hero: Kapil
- It's in my nature to be aggressive: Dhoni
- I played Holi with my hair: Dhoni
- Dhoni: Team India's official carrier
- Dhoni -- soccer's loss and cricket's gain