 The Indian squad for the Test series against the West Indies had been announced
earlier but the team will now undergo a couple of changes. For one, Zaheer Khan will not be playing due to an injury and will be replaced by Praveen
Kumar whereas S Sreesanth will be replaced by Abhimanyu Mithun, also missing out
due to fitness concerns.
Zaheer Khan's issue is related to his elbow whereas the pace man from Kerala,
Sreesanth will miss out due to his elbow issues.
These are not the only injuries that the Indian side has suffered from and
hence have had miss-outs from the series. The likes of Abhinav Mukund and Murali
Vijay have already replaced Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir,
both of whom will miss the games against West Indies due to injuries.
There is no Yuvraj Singh either, while Sachin Tendulkar has opted out of the series,
wanting to rest his body for the sterner tests of England. In their place, the
Indians will go into the series with the likes of S Badrinath and Virat Kohli
in the line-up. VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid are both fit to play with the former
being appointed the vice-captain in the Tests to Dhoni.
Earlier, the Indian side for the ODIs was also weakened. In fact, it had looked
even further weakened than the Tests in which Zaheer was expected to earlier play.
Now, the team will look to ensure that they can go into the Tests with a better
frame of mind than the Pakistanis who had lost to West Indies in the first Test
match.
Indian squad for Tests in West Indies is as follows:
MS Dhoni, VVS Laxman, S Badrinath, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh, Virat Kohli,
Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Abhimanyu Mithun, Abhinav Mukund, Munaf Patel, Pragyan
Ojha, Parthiv Patel, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma, Murali Vijay
It remains to be seen which of these will make it to the starting eleven. The
ones sure of making it to the eleven are Vijay, Dravid, Laxman, Dhoni, Badrinath,
Harbhajan, Munaf. The remaining four places could go any place. There is the need
for one opener, one middle-order batsman and two bowlers. The opener could be
one of Parthiv or Mukund. The middle-order spot could go to either Badrinath or
Raina, while the bowling has many options but Ishant could get a chance with Amit
Mishra.
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