By: Rohit Takkar
A day after the selectors picked the 15-member squad for the Sri Lanka Test series, all eyes is now on how the Indian batting and bowling performances shape up in the three-match Test series. There is no doubt that Team India has shown tremendous promise against Australian pace about six months ago and also showed great skills against Bangladeshi spinners in the recent two months.
But against Sri Lanka, the dynamics of the series will be different. It is going to be the ultimate test for this newly-built Indian team in the sub-continent. Like always, it will be Indian batsmen who will set it up for the bowlers.
But before start of Sri Lanka Test series, India will have to sort out their playing XI and that won’t be easy. With KL Rahul coming back into the thick of things after having missed the one-off Test against Bangladesh, the team management will be under obligation to accommodate him at the top of the order, as he had scored a maiden Test century against Australia.
And the player who replaced Rahul during the last Test match of the Australian series was Shikhar Dhawan, who also scored a big hundred in the last Test match that he played for India. If the team management decides to include both Dhawan and Rahul in the playing XI, a middle-order batsman will have to be sacrificed if the team goes ahead with five bowlers, which was what the team had preferred in Bangladesh.
Who knows? Just to strengthen batting, India may drop one pacer in the Sri Lanka Test series. With two spinners almost certain to be in the scheme of things, it will actually be interesting to see what kind of team combination, India will place its bets on.
The official version is that the management will take a call on the issue once the team has played a warm-up game. At the back of the mind, India Test captain Virat Kohli and team director Ravi Shastri, who will be joining the team after a break from the Zimbabwe series, must have worked out a combination. This will be revealed further as we draw closer to the day of the Test match!
