Tough Contests

Cricket purists all over the world are going to have a great time in the coming months with some tough contests. England plays South Africa and India travel to SriLanka for the test series, all the four teams are good in their own way and i am sure all the games should be absorbing.

As expected, here is our first victim of excess cricket M.S.Dhoni our ODI Captain. This issue has been raised by many players in the past and with the introduction of the IPL it is pretty obvious that we will have few players unfit due to non stop cricket. Its sad that a player who is considered as the future Test Team Captain has to opt out from the test series out of exhaustion at the age of 27. There is no point in blaming the board on this, its the players responsibility to make sure they keep them fit and prioritize the games one has to take part. No players place is guaranteed in the team, what if Dinesh Karthik comes with a stellar performance and keeps his place ?? Dhoni will be the loser, not the board. I am sure the break will do lot of good to him but it would have been better to opt out of the IPL or Kitply Cup or for that matter from the Asia Cup instead of a test series where he is yet prove himself as a batsmen.

Coming to the teams composition for the test series, i feel the selectors have picked the best possible team within the available players. Good that Gambhir is picked ahead of Wasim Jaffer and R.Sharma included in the squad in place of Youraj, nothing much to discuss about the other legends of Indian batting in Sachin,Dravid,Gangully and Laxman. After a long time we have all the three combination of spinners in the squad and i would think it is little early for Ojha and not sure why Murali Karthik was not considered (may be he is still not fit). On the fast bowling front, i dont think they will play a big part in the series as the wickets are tailor made for the spinners. I also feel there is no need to bring in 2 keepers in the squad for a short tour, this will only create pressure in the minds of the players. Lets see how our famed batting line up fair against the wily Muralidharan and awkward Mendis??