THREE CAPTAINS TO MAKE THEIR DEBUTS

The tri - series in Zimbabwe that will begin from May 28 between the hosts, India and Sri Lanka may not have a large following... but it has something unique. It will mark the captaincy debuts of all the three participating captains... or rather, the ODI captaincy debut.

The three captains named (Suresh Raina - India, Tillakaratne Dilshan - Sri Lanka, Elton Chigumbura - Zimbabwe) have a combined international captaincy experience of 2 Twenty20 matches... both captained by Dilshan for Sri Lanka against Pakistan and India. He certainly wouldn't want to bank of this experience... Sri Lanka lost both those matches in close finishes (3 wickets with 1 ball to spare against Pakistan and 3 wickets with 4 balls to spare against India).

Interestingly, one of these captains has not yet played Test cricket for his country... and he's not Chigumbura! It's Suresh Raina who is yet to make his Test debut for India (it's not far away, lad)... Chigumbura has 6 Test caps for Zimbabwe.

All these men have had some sort of experience in their younger days as captains. Dilshan has already captained Sri Lanka, Suresh Raina has been captain of his franchise team in IPL and of his state team (Uttar Pradesh) in Ranji Trophy, and Elton Chigumbura has also captained Mashonaland Eagles franchise (according to his Cricinfo profile) in Zimbabwe's domestic structure.

I have no idea when was the last time three players made their ODI captaincy debuts in a tri - series... lets see if Zimbabwe turns out to be the right venue to blood them into the job!