The Indian ODI squad have been selected, first for the series against Sri Lanka, and second for the Champions Trophy. Soulberry post on the selections generated many comments. Mohan speculates that Parthiv Patel will play in third Test and that Yusuf Pathan, Piyush Chawla and Robin Uthappa have been given enough opportunities to perform. Mohan on the likely team selection:

Given the combination that the team has gone with, unless one of Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh sit out (quite unlikely), India will go in with only 4 mainline bowlers — possibly Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Irfan Pathan and Harbhajan Singh! Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh will need to bowl out the 5th bowlers quota. This lack of balance has always been India’s weak suit — especially considering that Irfan Pathan is one of these 4 frontline bowlers! If any of these 4 bowlers has an an off day — and Irfan Pathan can have them easily — the bowling can get taken to the cleaners!

The tough alternative would be to replace Suresh Raina with a bowler. It is unlikely that the team would do that, particularly after Raina’s good showing in the Asia Cup!

Scorpicity develops an argument about Harbhajan Singh. Perhaps India shouldn't bother with playing an off-spinner at all?

 This is not a call to drop Harbhajan but to seriously start considering… if he can consistently bowl well, good for him and India. But looking at his dwindling consistency, India better quickly start looking out for the next off-spinner and start featuring him. Alternatively, they should consider dropping the idea of entertaining an off-spinner for the mere sake of variety and question whether it is contributing to a win. Why not feature two leg spinners then? I’m not convinced that variety in styles plays such an important role. It does when the quality is good… otherwise we might be better off featuring two quality leggies and my choice is Amit Mishra.

And John suggests that something truly is amiss with selecting spinners.