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The road to 2015 starts here

So India's Champions Trophy squad has been announced and 13 of my picks were accurate. Its heartening to see Patil and the other selectors put their faith in a young squad and lets hope they can stick with it even if things go pear shaped initially. In terms of the squad itself, I wasn't too surprised by one of the ones I got wrong (Vinay Kumar over Shami Ahmed) and quite surprised by the other (Mishra over Rahane). Three spinners in June feels like a luxury especially given Dhoni's faith in and familiarity with Ashwin and Jadeja. Its also harsh on Rahane who was one of the few players (Praveen Kumar being the other) to emerge with any sort of credit from India's last trip to England. It will be interesting to see whether Mishra gets a game at all.

On balance though, this is the best India have got at the moment and whether that's good enough to get into the last four of the short, sharp, almost sudden death tournament that the Champions Trophy is remains to be seen. The weaknesses (as seems to be the case with any recent Indian ODI side) will likely be in the top order batting and the death bowling. The other sub-text that is interesting for me is that at least eight (and possibly ten) of the fifteen selected are likely to be in the squad for South Africa later in the year. So in addition to kicking off planning for the 2015 World Cup, this tour will also serve as an early gauge for whether players like Dhawan, Vijay, Bhuvneshwar, and Jadeja can cut it in seamer friendly conditions. And the conditions are not the only things this young team will need to overcome. Since 2001, India have played only 14 one-dayers where none of Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Zaheer, and Harbhajan have featured. The only times they managed to win were against Zimbabwe in the CB series in Australia in 2004 and against a second string Sri Lanka team in a tri-series in Zimbabwe. A revamped squad can hopefully revamp history.
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