BOARDING PASS TO THE CARIBBEAN

Here is the Indian squad for the World Twenty20 Championship: MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla, Vinay Kumar, Rohit Sharma.

I'll again do the analysis that I had done when the list of 30 probables had been announced.

Pure Batsman (1): Gautam Gambhir

Batsmen who can bowl (5): Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Rohit Sharma

Wicketkeepers (2): MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik

Bowlers who can bat (5): Ravindra Jadeja, Praveen Kumar, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla, R Vinay Kumar

Pure Bowlers (2): Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra

As can be seen from the list above, a lot of emphasis has been laid on players who have the ability with both the bat and the ball. Therefore, it should not be surprising that Piyush Chawla has edged out Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha to grab the second spinner's slot in the team.

But in the first eleven, the second spinner's slot will go to Ravindra Jadeja, and rightly so. He faced a lot of flak in the previous edition of this Championship in England when he was sent higher up in the order to bat and could not get the runs at a fair clip. It was not his fault. It was a bad piece of captaincy, because Jadeja is a bowler who bats - he is not a genuine all-rounder.

The surprise omission was Virat Kohli, who has shown good form in the international cricket over the past few months. It is good to see that Gautam Gambhir and Ashish Nehra have been selected - it indicates that they are well on course for a recovery. And their quick recovery is absolutely necessary if India is to have a decent chance at the tournament.

There is a good chance that in the next 30 days (during the IPL), someone listed above might get injured (or injured again, as the case may be). So, I was thinking about the replacements. Here is my list of replacements:

Batsmen: Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey
Wicketkeeper: Naman Ojha
Spinners: Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha
Seamers: S Sreesanth, RP Singh (no Ishant Sharma for me)

Well, I do hope that there will be no need to seek any replacements. IPL has already seen the injury list swell and I do not want to see it affect the national team. Any national team, actually.