New Delhi, September 1 :

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly said on Friday he was hurt at his continued exclusion from the team and insisted he was good enough to play international cricket.

“It hurts, it does hurt to be out of the team,” the 34-year-old said in a television interview as the selectors prepared to pick the Champions Trophy squad on Sunday. “I still feel I am good enough and that’s the way it is. There must be something wrong which has kept me out.”

Ganguly, India’s most successful Test captain with 21 wins, was sacked in October and later eased out of both the Test and one-day squad following a row with coach Greg Chappell. Chappell, the former Australian captain and batting great, described Ganguly as a “disruptive influence” in an e-mail to the Indian cricket board last September which was leaked to the media.

Ganguly has been included in the preliminary 30-man squad for the Champions Trophy to be played in India in October-November. But his inclusion in the final 14 is unlikely despite being only the fourth batsman to score over 10,000 ODI runs after team-mate Sachin Tendulkar, Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul Haq and Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya.