As I mentioned in an earlier post, keeping in mind the hectic schedule that is on the cards for Team India over the next 6 months and given the importance of the flagship series against Pakistan and Australia coming up, it would be best if the selectors rested Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid from ODI duties for the series against Pakistan. That is probably the best thing that can happen for Indian cricket right now provided the alternative is sensible — and this could be tested out somewhat in the Challenger Series that starts tomorrow (25th Oct 2007) at Ahmedabad.
By skipping the Pakistan ODIs that go from 5 November to 18 November, Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly would be fresh for the Tests against Pakistan that commence 22 Nov. Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar should turn out Karnataka, West Bengal and Mumbai (respectively). Mumbai plays Karnataka and Bengal plays Hyderabad in the first games of the Ranjis this year! They would be handy matches for the Big-3! In the second round that starts 15 November, although Karnataka has an easy outing against Himachal Pradesh, Bengal plays Baroda and Mumbai plays Tamil Nadu.
Provided the Big-3 get asked to play the Ranji games, following is the ODI team I’d like to see for Team India against Pakistan:
Virender Sehwag
Gautam Gambhir
Robin Uthappa
Yuvraj Singh (vice-captain)
Rohit Sharma / S. Badrinath / Suresh Raina / Manoj Tiwary / Mohammed Kaif [2 of these 5]
M. S. Dhoni
Praveen Kumar / Yusuf Pathan / Joginder Sharma [2 of these 3]
Irfan Pathan
Harbhajan Singh / Murali Kartik / Piyush Chawla [2 of these 3]
Sreesanth
Zaheer Khan / R. P. Singh
Views/comments?
— Mohan
i3j3Cricket :: A blog for fans of Indian cricket... 
Sehwag’s place in one-day is not for sure me thinks.
Gambhir seems to perform well in T20 and somehow has not translated his success to one-days.
Uthappa’s weakness for the moving ball, should suggest he should come down the order, No. 5; a slogger like Symonds to accelerate the scoring in the middle overs.
I would give Sreesanth a miss and go with RP Singh instead…I’d rather have him play the test matches than ODIs.
Parthiv Patel is also someone who could be in contention as a batsman. IMHO, Kaif hasn’t done enough to warrant a selection yet (although he has lead the India A team admirably). Would be interesting to see how he performs in the Challenger series.
I also noticed that I inadvertently dropped Dinesh Kartik off the middle order bulge-list! Lest gnbmdr accuses me of anti-TN bias, I’d say that we need 2 of the following 6:
Rohit Sharma / S. Badrinath / Suresh Raina / Manoj Tiwary / Mohammed Kaif / Dinesh Kartik
I thought you dropped him on purpose 🙂
thamizhanukkum thamizhanukkum poattiya?
ramesh powar had one bad game in two years and he’s totally out of the reckoning. interesting.
I would give Sehwag a miss and look at pushing Kartik to the opening spot. He is after opening in tests. I would put 4 out 5 (leave Kaif out of the picture) in the side and not bother about the 3 allrounders.
I had noticed Dinesh Kartick was dropped or relegated to bottled water duties 🙂 In fairness, he has also not succeeded in the last few chances.
But, I support Dinesh Karthik for his “technical correctness” in his batting, not because he is from TN. Apart from Rahul Dravid, Sachin and VVS, IMHO, Dinesh Karthik and Suresh Raina are technically compact in their batting.
There is one other comment on your team. There are many candidates for the middle order. But, as you know the first four batsmen – opening, No. 3 and No. 4 have to be very good. I wish there are more candidates for those positions.
Right now, Gambhir has an assured spot for opening. Perhaps, Yuvraj has to step up to be No. 3, even though he is also susceptible outside the off-stump.
PS: To remedy the TN bias, we need to elect N. Srinivasan as President of BCCI and VB Chandrasekar as the Chairman of Selectors 😉
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