Twenty20 World Cup "India"

India

The Indian team will be without the big three, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid as well as start bowler Zaheer Khan and as a result most people are writing them of for the World Cup. I think this is a big mistake. As you all know twenty20 cricket is a very fast, trill-a-minute game suited for the younger generation and the big three could be as big a liability as an asset. There are a lot of young and fairly new faces like Yusaf Pathan, Rohit Sharma and Joginder Sharma; it will be anybodies guess how these three perform. India's opening pair, I think should be Rohit Sharma and Robin Uttappa with Uttappa to face. One down should be the pinch hitter Yusaf Pathan and two down should be Sehwag. The middle order should be made up of Dhoni, Karthik and Yuvraj. The tail should be Agarkar, Chawla, Sreesanth and RP Singh. Karthik should definitely keep wickets allowing Dhoni to captain freely. Yusaf was chosen to pinch so he should and he should also bowl his quota of four overs. The pitches have been made shorter for the world cup and scores of 150+ should be very achievable. The only problem I see is the inexperience in the team. Why was not a coach chosen before such an important event. The senior players must step up and take responsibility and help the first-time captain Dhoni. Dhoni will be consulting form a lot of players like Sehwag and Yuvraj and even Agarkar. I think in the batting department the presence of Kartik will be very important like the presence of Sreesanth being important in the bowling department. Kartik is a very talented player and a fierce competitor. He is also a gusty performer and captain material. He is a very consistent player and will be the team anchor in case they get into trouble. Sreesanth on the other hand is a very talented aggressive bowler who needs to be groomed but on his day he is as good as it gets. He will be Dhoni's talisman and should lead the bowling attack. He will be fine as long as he does not go over-board. If all this goes well then the Indian team will get a very different reception home to the World cup in West Indies last April.