Odd selection - so what's new?

India's squad for the T20 World Cup was announced recently, and as always, there are some good decisions and some odd ones. This is the squad -

MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla, Vinay Kumar, Rohit Sharma 

The good: All the key players are fit and present in the squad, unlike the last T20WC where Sehwag and Zak had fitness issues. Ishant and Sreesanth have been excluded finally after being whipped sore in the current IPL. Knowing the selectors, though, it was probably not because of their performances that they were omitted, more likely some obscure thing like Srikkanth deciding he doesn't want players whose names rhyme with his own. Also, the temptation to include a pace-bowling all-rounder has been resisted. Since there's only one of that kind in India, you know I mean Irfan Pathan. Vinay Kumar, golden arm guy, has been picked - surely a good choice? He's unlikely to play, though. Indian fourth seamers rarely do.

The bad: Rohit Sharma is there, in what could be his final opportunity for now - other batsman, like Robin 'onion' Uthappa and Manish 'pandeeee' Pandey are leaping past him in the pecking order. Piyush Chawla? Mishra and Ojha have hardly put a foot wrong despite being juggled by the clown that is Indian bowling (terribly weak analogy, I know). Though I do think Chawla may be a better flat pitch bowler than the other two, and flat pitches are what we can expect in the Caribbean.

The ugly: Nothing, really. I just though 'the ugly' should go right after 'the good' and 'the bad'.


"What d'you mean I'm not going to the Caribbean? I'm already dressed!"

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