injuries are opportunities...

at the times when india is missing its first choice players like sehwag, yuvraj, zaheer... it is also looking at players who follow the mantra... injuries are opportunities indeed...

one of the player... time's knocking door of... is suresh raina... who i beleive is the closest replacement of yuvraj...

but who else india play in today's crucial encounter...?

is it going to be dinesh karthik... or is it going to be kohli...?

tho i wanted kohli to be selected in first place in team india's champions trophy squad... which he is joining now eventually owing to yuvraj's injury... but i want dinesh karthik to play in today's encounter...

kathik has experience of south african conditions in which he impressed everybody with his attitude and temperament on his debut... making even harsha gushing that indian cricket has to find a place for the kid... his good showing at south africa enabled him to go to england too where he, if my memory serves me right, was one of the top scorer for india in tests... since then he has been india's emergency guy... he plays only in emergency... but that's beyond the scope of this post...

what i meant to say is that at least he has got the experience of playing under conditions that's prevailing in south africa... which is why england could adjust in south africa despite coming in late...

another reason for favoring dinesh karthik is that kohli has just joined the squad and playing him straight away in this crucial encounter can be counter productive to him as well as team india...

» related link:
time's knocking your door, raina...

so given the choice my line-up for today's game will be...

sachin
dinesh karthik
gambhir
raina
dhoni
dravid
nayyar / harbhajan
harbhajan / praveen kumar
mishra
ishant
nehra

in exactly the order as above... with nayyar or praveen kumar (my preference) swapping places... i was tempted to play rp instead of ishant... but rp has been so off color of late that i chose the experience of ishant over him...


update:
Pitch: Ravi Shastri: "It's the third match on a row on the surface and it's very dry. "
Dhoni: "We are playing with three seamers and Bhaji. (No Amit Mishra)."