India begins the Tri-Series with NEW ZEALand

Yet another ODI gets underway  and yet another match involving India and Sri Lanka - This has been in vogue for the last 4 years and with IPL being played every year, each player understands the other countries' player weaknesses very well.

But todays match starts between NewZealand and India. Both sides are missing key players - India misses out Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan while NewZealand will miss out Vettori, Brenddon Mccullum and Ryder. With this power packed batting line-up, India will start as favourites, particularly given the amount of experience the team has of the conditions in Dambulla. Traditionally, the track is far tougher to bat on under lights than in the afternoon session, due to which the toss assumes plenty of importance.

Fatigue is another thing that India has to worry about, especially for players who have been playing in Test matches - India have had only 3 days betweeen a Test Match and ODIs. In order to save time, they have decided to take an army chopper to Dambulla against the five-hour road journey ordeal from Colombo. On the whole, the team had only about 3 hour practise sessions at the nets on Monday.

There are certain points to New Zealand's advantage side is that

1. the whole team are coming off a lengthy break and
2. unlike most subcontinental pitches, Dambulla will favour their pace-heavy attack.
3. a good preparation for the World Cup matches, since WC matches are played in these sub-continent wickets.

Inorder to include Yuvaraj in the playing XI, Indians might risk of asking Virat Kohli to open the batting with Sehwag. This game they can surely try the off-spinner Ashwin

My suggested XI:

India : 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Virat Kohli, 3 Rohit Sharma, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 6 Suresh Raina, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Praveen Kumar, 9 Abhimanyu Mithun, 10 Pragyan Ojha/Ashwin, 11 Ashish Nehra

New Zealand : 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Peter Ingram, 3 Ross Taylor (capt), 4 Kane Williamson, 5 Scott Styris, 6 Grant Elliott/Jacob Oram, 7 Gareth Hopkins (wk), 8 Nathan McCullum, 9 Daryl Tuffey, 10 Kyle Mills, 11 Tim Southee