Sunday, May 9, 2010

INDIA 'A' TOUR OF ZIMBABWE

I just saw the announcement of India's team for the Zimbabwean tour, where they are scheduled to play an ODI tri-series with Sri Lanka as the third team from 28th May. After the finals of the tri-series on 9th June, India will take on the hosts, Zimbabwe, in 2 Twenty20 matches on 12th and 13th June at Harare.
Here's a look at the team (for the ODIs):

M Vijay, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Suresh Raina (capt), Virat Kohli (vice-capt), Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Vinay Kumar, Ashok Dinda, Pankaj Singh, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Naman Ojha (wk).

Note: Piyush Chawla will join the squad for the Twenty20s matches.

I wonder if they will be renaming it as "India A's tour of Zimbabwe" now. It's good that youngsters and fringe players will get the chance to wear the Indian blue and take on a decent opponent (Sri Lanka) in away-from-home conditions, but I hope that this move does not turn out to be arrogant on hindsight.

The players who have been rested are Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra. That is 9 players of India's first 11. Are the selectors being over-confident? Surely, they wouldn't want the team to lose to Zimbabwe! They might be able to explain a loss to Sri Lanka... but a loss to the hosts will put Cheeka's team in a fix.

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