Mumbai, June 01: In the absence of several senior cricketers, a second string Indian team, led by Suresh Raina, left for the West Indies today to participate in a lone T20, five one-day internationals and three Test matches.
The Indian team boarded a connecting flight to Barbados via London at 0230 hours from the Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport here.
India will play one T20 at Trinidad (June 4) and five-ODIs on June 6 (Trinidad), June 8 (Trinidad), June 11 (Antigua), June 13 (Antigua) and June 16 (Jamaica).
Besides, it will also participate in a three match Test-rubber that will be held at 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 T20 is without nine players who were part of the World Cup winning team under regular skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
The players missing out include Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan– who has been rested, the injured Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra and an unwell Yuvraj Singh.
S Sreesanth and Piyush Chawla have been dropped.
However, 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 Dravid, it created 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.
——–PTI