South Africa, India fine-tune Cup preparations

Graeme Smith

DURBAN, (Reuters) – South Africa and India lock horns  in a five-match one-day series starting today which  should help finalise their World Cup squads.

Captains Graeme Smith and Mahendra Singh Dhoni plan to use  the series to assess the fringe players who may ne needed during  the tournament in Asia which starts next month.

“World Cup squad selection is just around the corner,” Smith  told a news conference yesterday.
“Every player would love to go to a World Cup so there hs  that added pressure on individuals to perform. From my  perspective it is about finding the right combinations within  the squad that are going to work,” he added.
Dhoni said he wanted young players to get their chance.

Graeme Smith

“We want some of our younger players to play in this series  so that we can see how best to utilise them,” he said. “We will  have the World Cup in mind when making our selections but in  general we will pick our best available side.”

India’s hopes of following up their 1-1 test series draw  against the Proteas have been hit by injuries with opening  batsmen Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir forced out of the  squad.

India suffered a further blow when seamer Praveen Kumar was  been forced to return home with an elbow injury and his place in  the squad has been taken by Ishant Sharma.

Co-hosts India has been installed as World Cup favourites  and Dhoni said it was vital that senior players such as Gambhir,  Sehwag and Kumar were given the chance to recover.

“It would have been good to feature the main XI during the  series against South Africa but we don’t want to risk  aggravating injuries,” he said.

“A number of our players are carrying niggles and they are  too important to risk before a World Cup.”
Smith said the conditions in South Africa would be markedly  different to the spin-friendly conditions teams are likely to  face during the World Cup.

“As much as we would love to have the confidence of  performing here and being successful, it is not necessarily  going to define how well we are going to do in the World Cup,”  Smith said.

“Our mindset will be crucial in terms of playing good  cricket, getting the confidence up and players getting good  performances under their belt,” he added.

Squads:

South Africa – Hashim Amla, Johan Botha, AB de Villiers, JP  Duminy, Francois du Plessis, Colin Ingram, David Miller, Morne  Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Robin Peterson, Graeme Smith, Dale Steyn,  Imran Tahir, Lonwabo Tsotsobe

India – Ravichandran Ashwin, Piyush Chawla, Mahendra Singh  Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel,  Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma,  Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Sachin  Tendulkar Murali Vijay.