Rahul Dravid (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, V V S Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Sourav Ganguly, Irfan Pathan, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ajit Agarkar, Murali Karthik, Rudra Pratap Singh, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh.
This is the team. Notice it is 15 not 14 !
So lets try to go by process of elimination.
1. Only one out of Karthik/Kumble and one out of Agarkar/RP Singh plays.
We are left with 13.
- Two openers, (Sehwag , Gambhir)
- six middle order batsmen, (Dravid, Tendulkar + four)
- four bowlers (Pathan, Harbhajan and the above two)
- wicket keeper (Dhoni)
We still need to drop two more.
2. So if Ganguly has to find a place, we have to drop two out of three middle order batsmen in Laxman, Yuvraj and Kaif !!
No Jono, it wont be just dropping either Yuvraj or Kaif (if not Laxman) it will have to be both (or one of them plus Laxman) !!
So much for encouraging young talent !!
And this when we are playing four bowlers !
It will be interesting to see how they will get out of this one. Maybe, Ganguly will volunteer to open the innings and Gambhir will be axed !!
Dravid's character is going to be on test !