The Caribbean League from India
A depleted but a very fresh Indian cricket team, without senior players such as Sachin Tendulkar and regular captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, left for the West Indies to compete in a Twenty20 game and a five-match one-day series, starting from June 4.
Also Read: India Tour Of West Indies 2011 – Complete Schedule
Skipper Suresh Raina and the Indian team boarded a connecting flight to Barbados via London at 02.30 hours from the Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.
The Indian Team will play a Twenty20 in Trinidad on June 4 and subsequently five ODIs on June 6 (Trinidad), June 8 (Trinidad), June 11 (Antigua), June 13 (Antigua) and June 16 (Jamaica).
The one day series would be followed by a three match Test series in Jamaica (June 20-June 24), Barbados (June 28-Jul 2) and in Dominica (Jul 6-Jul 10).
The Indian squad for the ODIs and the lone Twenty20 is without nine players who were part of the World Cup winning team under Dhoni. The trio of Dhoni, Tendulkar, and Zaheer Khan has been rested presently and will be playing the test matches only. Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra have been found injured during the fourth version of IPL and have been dropped. Yuvraj Singh too is unwell and unfit for the series. S. Sreesanth and Piyush Chawla have been dropped. So with all the seniority absent a lot rests on the young shoulders of the new players.
M. S. Dhoni and Zaheer Khan will join the team for the Test matches along with V.V. S Laxman, Murali Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, and Sreesanth.
During the last Caribbean tour of the Indian Team in 2006 under captaincy of Rahul Dravid, the visiting side etched history by beating the home team (1-0 in a four match rubber) in a Test series for the first time in 35 years. But the ODI performance is not worth mentioning. The team will certainly look to change the 1-4 defeat it got in the five match ODI series then.
ODI and T20 squad: Suresh Raina (capt), R. Ashwin, S. Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh (vc), Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel, Parthiv Patel (wk), Yusuf Pathan, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Manoj Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan.
Test squad: M. S. Dhoni (capt), VVS Laxman (vc), M. Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel.
Tags: Caribbean, Cricket, India, Indian Cricket Team, Indian Squad, ODI Series, Suresh Raina, West Indies
