The Indian selectors would meet on March 26 to select 15 Men Squad for the T20 world cup in WestIndies (Caribbean Islands) from April 30 to May 16.
India is in Group C along with South Africa and Qualifiers Afghanistan and are scheduled to play Afghans on May 1 and the South Africans on May 2.The Indians would be playing these 2 group matches at St Lucia and If they are through to the second round(which is highly likely with Afghan as the third team) the next 3 matches would happen at St Lucia and Barbados.
Its weird with ICC Scheduling a consecutive T20 world cup in less than a year after England 2009, though it was meant to be a bi-yearly event and the official verdict was that a ODI world cup is scheduled to happen by 2011 and they are preponing the T20 Event to 2010.
Indian squad should not be with many changes or surprises for the WestIndies as One venue (st Lucia) have a great resemblance with Indian Wickets with not much bounce and aiding spin and the other venue(Barbados) as the one with true bounce aiding fast bowlers,spinners and batsmen alike.
Sehwag,Gambhir,Yuvraj,Raina,Kohli and Yusuf should be automatic selections for the batsmen slot.Zaheer,Ishant,Nehra,Praveen should make up the fast bowlers category while Harbhajan,Ravindra Jadeja should be the first option spinners.With Dhoni as the captain and frontline wicketkeeper,Dinesh Karthik should take up the reserve keeper slot as well as the pure batsman slot if needed.The above mentioned 14 men should be the automatic certainities provided no one picks up any injury during the month long IPL tourney.
The 15th man should be a point of debate as to pick a fast bowler or spinner or a batsman.To drill down further batting options are available in plenty in the above mentioned lot and wont need further strengthening.The bet should be between a spinner and or a fast bowler.The better option would be to go for a fast bowler as we have yusuf,sehwag and yuvraj who would roll their arm more than enough in addition to Harbhajan and Jadeja.Hence the final slot would be a toss up between sreesanth or Tyagi or whomsoever performing better at the IPL 2010.
The Probable Squad:
Virender Sehwag,Gautam Gambhir,Virat Kohli,Suresh Raina,Yuvraj Singh,Yusuf Pathan, MS Dhoni(c),Dinesh Karthik,Ravindra Jadeja,Harbhajan Singh,Zaheer Khan,Ashish Nehra,Ishant Sharma,Praveen Kumar,Sreesanth (or) Tyagi(Tentative).
Bowling Squad looks very weak. Especially seamers are not at all penetrative, except for Zaheer. Praveen Kumar can only be expected to give on-off performance. Nehra breaks down frequently. Vinay Kumar is lucky that he got few wickets in IPL. He is not a penetrative bowler. . Ishant is in poor form and good that he is left out. Manish Pandey and Sourabh Tiwary should have been picked. Selectors should have been a bit more bold and ruthless. Little chance of this team, powering India to Semis Stage with such weak bowling
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