WI tour an opportunity for youngsters to cement place: Zaheer

Mumbai: Indian pace spearhead Zaheer Khan on Sunday said the upcoming tour to West Indies would be a good opportunity for the youngsters to cement their place in the national squad.

"It is a very good opportunity for young players to showcase their talent. It's a big tour and if they perform well, they can cement their place in the team," he said during a promotional event.

India will play three tests, five ODIs and a lone T20 game during their tour to the Caribbean in June-July.

Senior players such as Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh will miss the entire tour, while Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni will join the team only for Test series.

On the appointment of Suresh Raina as the skipper for the ODIs and T20, Zaheer said," I want to wish good luck to him. He is a very good cricketer and is performing well for the past two years. I hope he does well."

The 32-year-old pacer said Dhoni was enjoying a great run as a skipper. "He is having an amazing run. IPL, Champions League, again IPL and in between the World Cup as well. He keeps things simple. He doesn't complicate things much and maintains calmness. He is a very good captain. I hope that he is even more successful."

Zaheer, who has taken 271 Test wickets and 273 ODI scalps in 78 and 191 matches respectively, said he preferred to rest as he wanted to keep himself fit for the tough series ahead.

"It's obviously a hectic season ahead. We are playing a lot of crucial tours in the upcoming months. Personally, it's crucial for me to keep myself fit - that is the plan. To keep the niggles out and stay on top of it", he said.

"Cricket is my passion. I enjoy bowling," he added. On whether there should be a window for IPL, he said, "We already have a window. It starts in April and goes on around till May, so that's the window."

Asked whether his father, known to be a disciplinarian, allowed him to indulge in fancy hair-cuts when he was young, Zaheer said, "My father has always been a fan of soldier cut. It was the only hair-cut I knew while I was growing up."

We'll be better prepared against spin - Gibson

West Indies will be better prepared to combat India's spin threat in the upcoming ODI and Test series, coach Ottis Gibson has said. The West Indies batsmen proved vulnerable against spin during the drawn Test series against Pakistan, losing 32 of their 40 wickets in the two games to slow bowlers. They face a spin-heavy Indian one-day squad, which includes offspinners Harbhajan Singh and R Ashwin, legspinner Amit Mishra, and part-timers Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma.

"It is not a lot of time but we have got a lot of players that have played spin and made runs against spin before," Gibson told theTrinidad and Tobago Express. "People just have to be clear what their game plan is against spin and back themselves and their ability."

The key to overcoming the spin threat, said Gibson, was to rotate the strike, something West Indies had struggled to do during the Tests against Pakistan. "Sometimes, we look very tentative and we sort of lock ourselves in a hole and then our only response is to try to hit ourselves out of the hole. We have got to find the balance between attack and defence," he said.

"They are setting us up, working us out and getting us out quite easy so we need to be able to rotate the strike against the spinners a lot more and make sure that the bowlers aren't bowling too many balls in succession to us."

The batsmen tackled spin quite comfortably in the nets, Gibson added. "We practice very well in the nets and guys chip down the wicket to the spinners in the nets, hit the ball over the top and hit the ball through the covers with ease," he was quoted as saying by AP. "But once the game starts, it seems always to be something that has held us back, certainly for the last couple of series that I have been involved in."

The Indian tour of West Indies begins with a Twenty20 international on June 4 in Trinidad. The teams then play five ODIs and three Tests.

Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Gambhir out of entire WI tour

India's already-depleted squad for the tour of the West Indies has suffered further setbacks: shoulder injuries to Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh's respiratory infection, and Sachin Tendulkar's wish to spend time with his family have ruled the four players out of the whole trip. Cheteshwar Pujara missed out on a chance to cement his place in the Test side as a knee injury picked up during an IPL game made him unavailable.

Expectedly, a number of uncapped players and those trying to make comebacks got their chance. Suresh Raina got a second chance at ODI captaincy in Gambhir's absence (MS Dhoni was rested for the limited-overs leg of the tour), and Manoj Tiwary and Shikhar Dhawan got a chance to add to their one ODI cap each. S Badrinath made a Test comeback, but the bigger news remained the uncapped players in the Test squad: Virat Kohli and Abhinav Mukund, who is almost certain to open with his Tamil Nadu team-mate M Vijay.

Mukund, a 21-year-old left-hand batsman, has impressive first-class numbers to back him: an average close to 60 over 40 matches and 13 centuries, including a triple-ton. Vijay has been an automatic choice as Test opener every time either Gambhir or Sehwag is unavailable. Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman provide the experience in the middle order, which leaves Kohli, Raina and Badrinath fighting for the two remaining slots.

Jaidev Unadkat and Umesh Yadav, who were picked inexplicably ahead of Abhimanyu Mithun for the South Africa tour, got the boot, making way for Munaf Patel and an extra spinner in Amit Mishra. Pragyan Ojha, who was part of India's Test squad to South Africa but missed all ODI cricket since, returned too. Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma and Harbhajan Singh, though, remained the likely first-choice attack.

Parthiv Patel replaced Wriddhiman Saha as Dhoni's wicketkeeping cover in the Test squad, not least because he can open the innings should Mukund struggle or should the team management not consider him ready to debut.

As expected, the selection meeting in Chennai, attended by the new coach Duncan Fletcher, was a long affair lasting more than two hours. The timing of the Test selection is surprisingly early: the first Test begins on June 20, and the selectors could have waited longer to see if any of the injuries or illnesses could have neared healing. The long recovery period associated with the injuries to Sehwag and Gambhir would have been a factor. And because of the pneumonitis in his left lung, we will never know if Yuvraj would have been considered for a Test comeback, on the back of his World Cup heroics.

In all, India are without Tendulkar, Dhoni, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Gambhir and Ashish Nehra for the ODIs. They will also have to do without Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir and Pujara for the Tests.

Test squad: MS 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.

Limited-overs 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.

GAUTAM GAMBHIR APPOINTED CAPTAIN FOR ONE DAY SERIES AGAINST THE WEST INDIES: CRICKET NEWS

Gautam Gambhir appointed captain for One Day series against the West Indies: Cricket News

The Indian Cricket Board has appointed left-handed opening batsman Gautam Gambhir as captain of the team for the One Day International (ODI) series against the West Indies that starts later this month. India would travel to the Caribbean for a full series that includes 5 ODI and 3 Test matches.

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