Varun Aaron, Ajinkya Rahane Replace Virender Sehwag, Ishant Sharma In ODI Squad

India’s fitness woes on their tour of England have grown further with the ruling out of Virender Sehwag and Ishant Sharma from the limited overs version of the tour. In their place, the selectors have named Ajinkya Rahane and Varun Aaron in the side, none of whom have played any internationals in their career so far.

While Sehwag’s injury has been well-chronicled and doubts over his fitness had surfaced throughout the series, Ishant had a sudden problem with a ligament injury to his left ankle. Interestingly, Ishant becomes the third seamer and fourth bowler from India on this tour to suffer from an injury. Earlier, Zaheer Khan had dropped out of the first Test match, Harbhajan Singh managed only two of the games under his belt, while Praveen Kumar had to be ruled out of the Tests after manfully sending down more than his quota of overs in the first three games.

Yuvraj Singh’s fractured hand in the second game also added to India’s travails.

Rahane has been on the selection radar for some time now, and averages 67 in first class cricket. On a tour with the Indian Emerging side to Australia, he hit a couple of centuries against his Australian and South African counterparts.

India already has Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir as their opening batsmen, with Parthiv Patel as their backup opener. Rahane’s will act as a cover to the three in case of another injury or form issues.

On the other hand, Aaron has been one of the more spoken about pace bowlers in the country since the time he apparently sent down a delivery at more than 153 km/hr, understandably so given the dearth of pace bowlers in the country. There are videos abound of Varun Aaron’s fastest ball on the internet.

Of course, there are questions being asked of why he was selected ahead of someone like Umesh Yadav, another young pace bowler, who was given one chance to play Zimbabwe last season.

India play England in a single T20I and five ODIs in the tour.