Published: Aug 11, 2015, 09:00 AM (IST)
Edited: Aug 10, 2015, 03:46 PM (IST)
India will take on Sri Lanka in the first of the three Tests at Galle on August 12, and Virat Kohli’s insistence of playing five bowlers presents India with a selection debate ahead of the first Test. Nikhil Popat takes a look at the possible XI for the Test at Galle.
India will tour under Virat Kohli for a full series for the first time since the retirement of MS Dhoni. India played the one-off Test in Bangladesh and had them on the mat before rain intervened. India lost the One-Day Internationals (ODIs) to Bangladesh but a second string side completed a successful tour of Zimbabwe, winning the one-dayers 3-0 and then drawing the Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) 1-1. India will tour Sri Lanka with a long home series against South Africa to follow. While India’s form in coloured clothing remains good, it is in the whites that India is looking to settle into a winning combination. Read: What Virat Kohli’s India can realistically achieve
India began their tour of Sri Lanka well with an impressive show in the game against Sri Lanka Board President XI. They put up a good score and then Ishant Sharma’s 5 for 23 dented the hosts’ chances. India suffered collapses in both their inning though, and it is something that has been troubling them since the tour of England in 2014. In the first innings, they were bowled out for 351 after being 108 for 0 and it took a 134-run stand between Ajinkya Rahane (109) and Cheteshwar Pujara to get those many runs. In the second innings it was Pujara again with KL Rahul who scored the bulk of the runs.
The major concern for India though will be the form of Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Neither of them have looked good despite having a couple of hits. Kohli even played the second unofficial Test against Australia A but did not quite make the big score. As India sit down to select their starting XI for the first game, Kohli himself will have some decisions to make. Read: Is Rohit Sharma the right choice at No. 3 for India in Test cricket?
Top order: Shikhar Dhawan has been in great form recently, getting a good 60 in the tour game and 173 in his last Test inning, and he becomes a guaranteed starter. With Murali Vijay ruled out of the first Test, Rahul will get his deserved place at the top. It will help that both he and Dhawan shared a 108-run stand in the tour game. Kohli has asserted that Rohit will bat at No. 3, with Kohli himself and Rahane slated to fill in the spots at Nos 4 and 5 respectively. This will mean that despite getting a couple of good scores both Rahul and Pujara will have to wait for their chances on this tour. Read: India vs Sri Lanka 2015: Shikhar Dhawan’s best chance to seal Test spot
Lower- Middle order: When you are playing with five bowlers, your ‘keeper batting at No. 6 becomes a vital cog. This means that Wriddhiman Saha stepping up will be very crucial for India in Sri Lanka. He is rated as one of the best players of spin bowling and all of his art will come to fore in the island nation. India then have the luxury of playing two off-spinners in Harbhajan Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin. Both of them are more than handy with the bat — they each have as many Test centuries as Rohit does at this point —which has also been one of the points Kohli talked about before leaving for Sri Lanka. Read: Stats analysis of Indian batsmen in Sri Lanka
Fifth bowler: The main selection debate comes here for India. Kohli has often backed bowlers who can bowl at good pace but now he faces a selection battle as to whom to go in with in the first Test. Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been one of India’s best Test bowler for some time now and with Ishant taking a five-wicket haul in the tour game, it becomes increasingly difficult to leave him out. This makes the battle of the fifth bowler a toss-up between two pace bowlers, Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron, and the leg-spinner, Amit Mishra.
Mishra was, it would appear, picked for the series based on Yasir Shah’s heroics during Pakistan’s tour of Sri Lanka in 2015. But Kohli has insisted on playing aggressively so he could go for an extra pace bowler in either Umesh or Aaron. The thing which might go against the two pace bowlers is that they often have one good spell but end up conceding a lot of runs, which is not ideal for the team. The debate of playing a fast bowler over a spinner might come down to the pitch conditions but there will be a lot of scrutiny either way. Read: Virat Kohli’s trial by fire as Test captain begins with tour of Sri Lanka
Expected India XI: Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra/Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
(Nikhil Popat is a die hard cricket enthusiast and a PotterHead till the end of time. He can be followed on Twitter @CricCrazyNIKS)
