A Young team, A new captain
What a story it has been for Suresh Raina.
Wasn't selected for the Asia Cup, plays a brilliant season of IPL and some beautiful performances in the World T20, he is back in the ODI squad and guess what, he is back as the captain of the side.
The team is young. No Dhoni, no Kohli, no Dhawan, no Rohit, no Jadeja, no Ashwin. The most important challenge for Raina is the captaincy. He hasn't been a successful captain so far with 5 losses and 4 wins out of 9, including the 2 losses to Zimbabwe. All he needs to think is about his form of batting. He is in a very good form and enjoys a healthy batting average(70) in Bangladesh. When he bats well, he will get confidence and which will help him to captain better. The next problem for Raina is team selection. Especially, who will bat at no.3? There is Pujara, Saha and Rayudu and even the captain himself Raina.
Raina has an exceptional record batting at no.3. Saha gives an advantage of a wicket keeping batsman. Rayudu was there in the Asia cup and the Zimbabwe tour and he has proven his worth at no.5 or no.6. So, no need for him to push up. For me, Raina should bat at no.3, putting Pujara at 4 and Saha and Rayudu at 5 and 6. Raina will get time in the middle when he bats at 3. And also, his all hundreds have come at no.3. This way Manoj Tiwary doesn't get a place if Raina goes in with 5 bowlers 6 batsman, if he goes the Dhoni way, that is to select an extra batsman, Manoj who has returned after a long time, would bat at 5 and pushing Saha and Rayudu one position behind or else he will go in with the Bowling all rounder Akshar Patel who can really be a competitor to Jadeja or even Stuart Binny. It would be interesting to see, how Raina will do it. In the bowling department, Raina has Mishra and Rasool to serve him and in the pace, he has the purple cap winner of the IPL, Mohit Sharma and Umesh Yadav.
The probable playing 11 for the first two matches :
1. R. Uthappa
2. A. Rahane
3. S. Raina (c)
4. C. Pujara
5. A. Rayudu
6. W. Saha(wk)
7. S. Binny
8. A. Mishra
9. R. Vinay Kumar
10. U. Yadav
11. M. Sharma
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