before a ball is bowled in india vs south africa test series both camps seems to be in a bit of doldrums by some unexpected turn of events...
south africa will be without their regular coach mickey arthur... who authored his resignation just before the start of south africa's tour of india... though the air is still not clear about the exact reason of his resignation... but it is believed that arthur and graeme smith's working relations had reached a nadir and ultimately coach had to move out to make way...
the disturbances in india's camp are more direct that have the potential to impact final results... dravid, laxman and yuvraj injuries have coincided at the same time... and we are staring at the possibility of indian middle order without the likes of dravid and laxman for the first time since as far as my memory goes... though i expect laxman's injury will heal in time and he will be fit to play...
i deliberately not included yuvraj's name in the list of players team india will miss coz to me he has not done anything of note yet to convince me that he really belongs to the highest form of cricket... and even if he was not injured... i would have argued to drop him in first place for the upcoming series... who according to me is blocking a spot of a deserving player more than so called seniors...
what our five wise men failed to do for bangladesh test series... the unfortunate injuries have managed to do that against much tougher opponent... to try and mark some players who can play in middle order when the legends won't be there that is... goes to show even if you fail to show courage to take decisions the circumstances can force you to take them...
the series, in this light, will serve as 'preview' of what can happen when the vacuum will be created by mass exodus of legends if selectors fail to manage the transition...
so i hope and wish when our selectors will meet tomorrow (28th january) to select team india for the south africa test series... they will think out of box and select the forgotten man of indian cricket... mohammad kaif... along with subramanium badrinath... and of course the steady murly vijay who seems to have become the 'instant fix' guy for team india of late will definitely get a place ...
a reason to celebrate...
kaif has recently scored a double ton and a century in successive innings ... has international exposure and experience of almost all conditions and situations... is still a very good fielder... basically by all means another player who is an 'instant fix'...
so my team india batting order will be... sehwag, gambhir, vijay, sachin, kaif, laxman/badrinath, dhoni, with rohit sharma and/or dinesh karthik in reserves...
it will be interesting what middle order batting combination our five wise men will come up with tomorrow...
Team India: MS Dhoni (capt), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, S Badrinath, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Ishant Sharma, M Vijay, Sudeep Tyagi, Abhimanyu Mithun, Wriddhiman Saha.
Board President's XI: Abhinav Mukund, Parthiv Patel, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma (capt), Manish Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhishek Nayar, Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin, Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Manpreet Gony.
