Shikhar Dhawan does not have runs under the belt, and the Vijay Hazare Trophy will provide a good opportunity to rectify that © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
There are less than 100 days to go for the Champions Trophy, and the build-up has already started with the tournament cup setting off on tour to all eight competing nations. India, the defending champions, are currently playing a four-Test series at home against Australia, and do not play an ODI until the tournament, starting on June 1 in England. India have most bases covered in ODI cricket, but they need a stable opening partnership in addition to back-up options for the top players. These are some of the gaps the selectors will seek to plug when the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the domestic 50-over tournament, kicks off on Saturday.
For starters, the presence of internationals like MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Shikhar Dhawan – a rare luxury in Indian domestic cricket – is likely to attract more eyeballs. Dhoni’s most recent game with Jharkhand came in the previous season’s Vijay Hazare Trophy. Before that, he had last turned out for his state in 2007.
In January, MSK Prasad, India’s chairman of selectors, played down concerns about the form of the openers in ODI cricket, and believed that domestic limited-overs cricket would tune them up for the Champions Trophy.
Dhawan, who had helped India transition from Virender Sehwag in the last Champions Trophy, isn’t a certainty this time. He does not have the weight of runs behind him. Injuries haven’t helped his cause either. In his first ODI in nearly a year, Dhawan was swung out for 1 against England in Pune, and followed it up with 11 in the next ODI in Cuttack despite getting a life on the same score. Dhawan was left out for the third ODI and returned to the domestic set-up for the Inter-State and Inter-Zonal T20s. He struck back-to-back fifties, but was inconsistent.
KL Rahul and Ajinkya Rahane, who are both with the Test team, haven’t been consistent enough in ODIs either. A strong performance in the Vijay Hazare Trophy might help Dhawan sneak ahead in the race for the hotly-contested opening slots. And then there is Rohit Sharma, who, if fully fit, will be the first-choice opener. But Rohit will have to prove his fitness first in domestic cricket, in line with national coach Anil Kumble’s policy.
Rohit, who sustained a thigh injury in the Visakhapatnam ODI against New Zealand, is back to training. He hasn’t been named in Mumbai’s squad yet, but might play in the latter part of the tournament if he regains full fitness. “If Rohit is fit later and expresses the desire to play, he will get to play in the tournament,” Mumbai’s chairman of selectors Milind Rege told ESPNcricinfo.
Amit Mishra and Mohammed Shami, too, haven’t recovered from injuries, and it remains to be seen if they make a late entry into the tournament. India would ideally want them to get fit and some one-day game-time before flying to England.
India’s middle order, though, looks settled – if not set in stone – with Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, and Kedar Jadhav firing in unison against England. For fringe players like Manish Pandey, who will have to juggle batting and captaincy for Karnataka in the absence of the injured Vinay Kumar, and Ambati Rayudu, who made a hundred for India A against the touring England side, this could be a chance to show the selectors that they merit a place in the squad, even if not necessarily as first-eleven picks.
Suresh Raina and Rishabh Pant, the captains of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi respectively, are also in the India middle-order roulette. Raina’s form and fitness has been particularly patchy in the past year. He played only three matches in the Ranji Trophy and was then ruled out of the ODI series against New Zealand with viral fever after initially being picked in the squad. He was overlooked for the England ODIs, but was selected for the T20Is.
On the eve of the T20 series, Virat Kohli said: “We still believe that he [Raina] has enough to contribute in the short formats for India.” Raina repaid the captain’s confidence with a 45-ball 63 – his first T20I fifty since 2010 – in the third game in Bangalore.
Pant, meanwhile, has set the domestic scene alight, and his promotion to state captaincy, after having made his List A debut in last year’s tournament, only adds to India’s bench strength. Ashish Nehra, who made his international debut in 1999, when his new Delhi captain was a year old, has also set his sights on the Champions Trophy, though he last played an ODI in the 2011 World Cup.
“I aim to play at least three matches to build up my match-fitness. Fifty-overs is a different challenge and Vijay Hazare is a good platform to test myself,” Nehra had told ESPNcricinfo in a recent interview.
The Under-19 talents, who have a World Cup to play next year, are also in the Vijay Hazare mix. Mumbai’s Prithvi Shaw, who struck a hundred in his most recent Youth ODI against England Under-19s, and Tamil Nadu’s S Radhakrishnan, who top-scored with 65 in a tie in the same series, are in line to make their List A debuts.
In all, 28 teams and over 400 players will battle it out across multiple venues in Delhi, Kolkata, Odisha, and Chennai for the Indian domestic 50-over title and Champions Trophy berths.
Click here for a full list of fixtures.
Deivarayan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo