Even as the international cricket community looks to South Africa for the commencement of the Indian Premier League later this month, preparations are on for the Twenty20 World Cup right alongside. The probables for the Indian squad has now been announced, with some expected inclusions and a few notable exceptions. The IPL will be crucial particularly for the Indian players since it will be this, in the absence of any domestic T20 tournament that will be the preparation for the T20 World cup to be held in England, in June 2009.
Though the BCCI had announced that a domestic T20 tournament would be held in March or April, this had never materialised and ultimately domestic cricket had to make way for the IPL. So it has been that the players have not had the kind of practice they should have had in the T20 format that they should have had prior to the T20 world cup that will be held in June in England and the experience that the players get in the ILP will be crucial. Prior to the IPL however, the probables for the T20 world cup have been announced. There were some surprising and some expected exceptions in the squad named such as Sreesanth, Joginder Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Ajit Agarkar, who were part of the Indian T20 team that won the inaugural T20 world cup in 2007. Sreesanth’s exclusion was to be expected in view of the fact that his fitness has been a worry for a while now and since he was ruled out of the IPL as well. Sreesanth has been struggling with a back injury that he had sustained during the IPL last year, which has put him out of the reckoning. As reported in the cricket news, Sharma, Chawla and Agarkar failed to make much of an impact during the domestic cricket tournaments and were not considered for this reason. Some new comers such as Wiriddhman Saha, Abhishek Nayar and Dhawal Kulkarni are also being considered; having been named as part of the 30 man squad. The final list of the 15 or 16 players that will actually be participating in the T20 world cup will be announced by early May as reported in the cricket news. Meanwhile the following list of probables has been announced:
Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, M. S. Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan, Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Pragyan Ojha, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Dinesh Karthik, M. Vijay, A. Rahane, S. Badrinath, Robin Uthappa, Virat Kohli, Manoj Tiwary, Wiriddhman Saha, Abhishek Nayar, Amit Mishra, R. Ashwin, R. P. Singh, L. Balaji, Dhawal Kulkarni, Naman Ojha.
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