Harbhajan's entry will break India's ODI winning combination
Harbhajan's entry will break India's ODI winning combination
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Harbhajan Singh will make a return to the Indian one-day team. |
The national selection committee headed by Krishnamachari Srikkanth faces a challenging job to tinker with the one-day team which won in Sri Lanka as they sit down today to pick the teams for the New Zealand tour. They will be finalising all the three outfits Tests, one-dayers and Twenty20 but it will be the team for the limited overs series that will test their selection skills.
With the return of Harbhajan Singh, who missed the Sri Lanka series owing to injury, the selectors will be forced to make a tough call and delete a name from the ODI squad which won in Lanka to accommodate the experienced off-spinner.
MiD DAY has learnt that the toss-up is between pace bowling all-rounder Irfan Pathan and spin-bowling all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja. Irfan has not done badly since his comeback and his popularity has particularly soared after his heroics in the Twenty20 win over Sri Lanka.
On the other hand, the selectors see Jadeja as a good investment for the future. He underlined his potential with an unbeaten half-century in the only ODI he played in Sri Lanka. Left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha is set to keep the second spinner's place.
The committee is in favour of having two wicketkeepers for both the ODIs and Tests. Tamil Nadu's Dinesh Karthik is favourite for the second keeper's slot in the ODIs while Gujarat's Parthiv Patel or Bengal's Wriddhiman Saha are being touted as dark horses for the Tests.
Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma will be there in all the teams. L Balaji and Munaf Patel are likely to make the Testu00a0 team and Praveen Kumar the limited overs outfits.
There could be a surprise in store when it comes to picking an extra seamer for the limited overs teams.
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Gujarat's Siddharth Trivedi or Rajasthan's Pankaj Singh are being tipped to bag that spot.
