Indian cricket team leaves for West Indies

Indian cricket team captain Suresh Raina and team coach Duncan Fletcher before a press conference in Mumbai on Tuesday. Raina-led Indian team left for the West Indies on Wednesday.

A depleted Indian cricket team, sans senior players such as Sachin Tendulkar and regular captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, on Wednesday left for the West Indies to compete in a Twenty20 game and a five-match one-day series, starting June 4.

Led by Suresh Raina, the Indian team boarded a connecting flight to Barbados via London at 0230 hours from the Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport here.

India will play a Twenty20 in Trinidad (June 4) and five ODIs on June 6 (Trinidad), June 8 (Trinidad), June 11 (Antigua), June 13 (Antigua) and June 16 (Jamaica).

The one—day series would be followed by a three-match Test-rubber in Jamaica (June 20-June 24), Barbados (June 28—Jul 2) and Dominica (Jul 6—Jul 10).

The Indian squad for the ODIs and the lone Twenty20 is without nine players who were part of the World Cup winning team under Dhoni.

The players missing out include the rested trio of Dhoni, Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, the injured troika of Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra and an unwell Yuvraj Singh.

S. Sreesanth and Piyush Chawla have been dropped.

Dhoni and Zaheer will join the team for the Test matches along with V.V. S Laxman, Murali Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, and Sreesanth.

When India last toured the Caribbean Islands in 2006 under Rahul Dravid, the side scripted history by beating the home team (1—0 in a four match rubber) in a Test series for the first time in 35 years.

However, the team will certainly look to change the 1—4 thrashing it got in the five—match ODI series then.

ODI and T20 squad: Suresh Raina (capt), R. Ashwin, S. Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh (vc), Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel, Parthiv Patel (wk), Yusuf Pathan, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Manoj Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan.

Test squad: M.S. Dhoni (capt), VVS Laxman (vc), M. Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel.