India’s team to go to West Indies for a four ODI and one T20I series has been announced and the side will not have the services of Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan for the tournament. Virender Sehwag, whose exclusion had caused controversy in the ICC World T20 has also been rested, as has Suresh Raina who suffered from a hairline fracture on his thumb during the tournament.
Instead, the side has a reasonably new look, with the return of Ashish Nehra, R.P.Singh and S.Badrinath and the inclusion of Abhishek Nayar, Ravindra Jadeja and Murali Vijay in the line-up.
Tendulkar had not recovered from the injury he had picked up during the IPL, while Zaheer Khan too had hurt his shoulder during the tournament, but played in the ICC World T20 and looked a little off-target. Sehwag was around with the team during the initial part of the tournament but did not play a single game and was later diagnosed with grade-I tear in his shoulder. Patel and Pathan haven’t had a great couple of months and the selectors would have thought about giving other cricketers like Nayar and Nehra, who had had a decent IPL a chance to perform during the series. Nayar has been doing well for the Mumbai Ranji team as an all-rounder as well, and it will be interesting to see whether he gets his chances in the Caribbean.
