Ganguly's test spot up for grabs by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

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Event:

England in India 2008/09

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DateLine: 15th November 2008

 

Ganguly's test spot up for grabs After Yuvraj's blazing hundred at Rajkot, once again the question has cropped up as to who is going to fill the vacant no 6 position left by the retirement of Saurav Ganguly. The competition is hotting up and a lot of players have thrown their hat in the ring.The first one to come out of the blocks is Yuvraj Singh. After being left out of the test side and stripped off his vice captaincy the last thing he would have wanted was, his ODI place being questioned after a poor year. But he silenced his critics with a brilliant 64 ball hundred in the first ODI.

Now will that translate into a test spot nobody knows. There are others in the running as well. Rohit Sharma would be itching to get back after a poor run of scores in the last few odi's. He didn't get much of a hit in the middle in the first odi.After a century in the side game against Australia, he would want to make amends and score runs against England, and put his hand up for selection. This leaves other two important contenders in Badrinath and Raina.

Badrinath has scored tons of runs in domestic cricket. He went to Sri Lanka and won the crucial second odi with Dhoni. Since then he has been a part of the test team but has not got a chance. He is not a part of this team for the first three odi's. He will want to come back and make runs in the remaining odi's to stake a claim for the test spot.

That leaves Suresh Raina who has had a great comeback since the IPL. He had a great odi series in the Asia cup and in Sri Lanka.But he would want to shake the tag of being a one day specialist. If he has a good odi series against England he will also be in contention for a test spot.

There are others like M.Vijay, Virat Kohli who are vying for various positions in the team and the competition seems to be healthy and it can only be good for Indian cricket. But the important thing remains to be seen is whether all these players can convert their talent and ability into something substantial at test level. Because everybody knows that test cricket is totally a different ball game all together and the person whom they will be replacing, Dada, was no slouch himself, playing for India in more than 100 test matches and scoring 7000 runs.