NEW DELHI: The World Cup debacle is likely to see a major change in the Indian team and according to sources the selectors have decided to drop or 'rest' some senior players for the Bangladesh tour.
The Indian team for next month's short tour of Bangladesh is to be chosen only after April 15, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had said, with big names like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Ajit Agarkar most likely to miss the bus.
Newly appointed cricket manager Ravi Shastri will also be present during the selection meeting and he has already made it clear in an interview to CNN-IBN on April 8 that youngsters need to be given a chance.
"You have to look at youth in whatever you do, in whatever walk of life at some stage. There is a shelf period for everything and if you have got to take, if you have got to experiment and try and do something then do it against Bangladesh," Shastri said.
"Do it on this trip of Bangladesh and see what comes out of it. When you are playing a Test match, you would like to be playing with your strongest side. So, its not that the seniors are out of it totally but I would like to see youngsters given opportunities and see what happens," he added Former coach Greg Chappell, who quit after the poor performance in the World Cup, had also expressed his desire to see more youngsters in the team and his report along with that of manager Sanjay Jagdale could be the basis for dumping the seniors whose poor form in the World Cup is widely seen as the reason behind India's ouster after the group stage.
A section of the BCCI also feels that the Bangladesh tour would be the ideal time to blood the youngsters as despite the good show by Dav Whatmore's team in the World Cup where they not only beat India but also stunned South Africa in the Super Eights match, it might be the only testing place in world cricket. The replacement could be the players like Ramesh Powar, who missed being named in the World Cup squad by a whisker, and Manoj Tewary.
Tewary was the star for Bengal's Ranji team during the last season and is most likely to be joined by his teammate Ranadeb Bose. The other players who can also see their name on the team sheet are UP's Mohammad Kaif, Rohit Sharma (Mumbai), S Badrinath (Tamil Nadu), VRV Singh (Punjab) and Ishaant Sharma (Delhi). On the other hand Suresh Raina is already out of the race as he's recuperating from a knee surgery.
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