Suneer Chowdhary
( Cricket Writer)
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The Indians are coming off a rather long season; it included the Tests and the CB series in Australia, the Tests against the Proteas and then the rather protracted, 45 day long, Indian Premier League. And with a break of less than a week, the team is off to play a tri-series against Pakistan and Bangladesh in Dhaka.

The Indian team should be the favorites in this much abbreviated series although after a four leg round-robin in Australia and a 14 match-per-team IPL tournament immediately preceding the tri-series – the Indians may be exhausted. Tendulkar is already out of the series with an aggravated groin, Zaheer Khan has had a niggle or two and has opted out as well, and the recent victim is Sreesanth who may not be at full throttle due to a side strain. With Dhoni’s finger being suspect through the latter part of the IPL, and an assured fact that a couple of others who would be carrying an ache or two, it would be surprising if India did not give the ‘blue-cap’ to the new debutants in the team.

The second issue that they may face would be with the motivation – or rather, a lack of it. With the bank accounts jangling all the way due to the IPL, and just having seen the high of taming the Aussies in their own den, it would not be an easy task to motivate themselves for this short, you-blink-your-eye-and-its-over series. Fortunately for Team India, they have a captain whose tendency to remain unfazed in times of the good and the bad, equally, seems to have rubbed off well onto his young team. Incidentally, Virender Sehwag – at 29 years of age – is the oldest member of the team, something that is so reminiscent of the youth-first policy that Dhoni strongly advocates.

Even without Ganguly, and now Tendulkar, the batting looks in settled hands. Virender Sehwag has come back well, and with Gautam Gambhir, the opening pair would look to continue their good work, where as Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni, have all been in reasonable nick. The one batsman who may just be little cause for concern, is Robin Uthappa. His penchant for playing ungainly scoops over fine-leg and edges to third-man went well till luck was on his side, but in the IPL, he struggled with the slower nature of pitches. The wickets are not going to change drastically on the other side of the border, and Uthappa would need to reinvent himself with the bat to seal his place; especially with the emergence of Yusuf Pathan as a top order batsman.

For almost the first time, the Indian pace bowling cupboard looks more filled than their counterparts from Pakistan. In Ishant Sharma, R.P. Singh, S. Sreesanth and Praveen Kumar, they have a good blend of raw pace and seam and swing bowling options, something that the Pakistan team was usually famous for, over the years. Piyush Chawla adds the spinning variety, while, debut of Pragyan Ojha may well depend on the state of the pitch at Mirpur.

In the end, the starting line-up for India may be the following:

Sehwag, Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni, Uthappa, Irfan Pathan, Piyush Chawla, R.P. Singh, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma.

If fit, Sreesanth may make it into the team in place of Praveen Kumar and it would have been interesting to watch his usual antics; bowling or otherwise. However, with Sreesanth fitness still in doubt, it would be better to rest him rather than aggravate the injury. But then, is anyone really listening?