Gambhir, Yuvraj out of WI tour; Raina to lead ODI team

Gautam Gambhir will not tour the West Indies due to his injured shoulder, it was finally confirmed by the BCCI after Friday's selection committee meeting to pick the Test squad. But in an unfortunate development today, Yuvraj Singh has also opted out of the tour due to a respiratory infection.
Yuvraj has a small patch of pneumonitis on the left lung. Sachin Tendulkar, who had earlier opted out of the ODIs, will now miss the whole tour citing family commitments. With Gambhir's injury, and with Virender Sehwag undergoing a shoulder surgery, India will be without both their regular openers after a long time.
"Tendulkar will not play the Test series. However, he will be available for the full tour of England, that follows," the BCCI said.
Suresh Raina will replace Gambhir as the ODI captain. Manoj Tiwary and Shikhar Dhawan have been named the replacement batsmen. Harbhajan Singh will be Raina's deputy.
BADRINATH, MUKUND, KOHLI IN TEST SQUAD
Tamil Nadu batsmen Subramaniam Badrinath and Abhinav Mukund have been brought in while ODI regular Virat Kohli has also been named in the squad. Captain MS Dhoni and Zaheer Khan will be available for the Tests. Test specialist VVS Laxman has been named Dhoni's deputy.
Laxman was earlier India's vice-captain on the South Africa in 2006. Munaf Patel, who last played a Test on the tour of New Zealand in 2009, is also back in the Test squad.
Badrinath was the highest run-scorer in the Ranji Trophy last season with 922 runs, including four tons and three fifties with a highest score of 195 at an average of 131.71.
CONSISTENT PERFORMERS
Badrinath has a stellar first-class record and has scored 7478 runs at an average of 62.31, with 27 centuries and 32 fifties. He last played a Test at home against South Africa in 2010.
Mukund had an impressive Ranji Trophy season. In nine matches, he made 620 runs with a highest score of 232 at an average of 56.36.
Dhawan was the highest run-scorer for Deccan Chargers in IPL-4 with 400 runs at an average of 33.33 and strike rate of 129.03. Tiwary scored 359 runs at an average of 51.28 and strike rate of 110.46 for Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL-4.
Delhi's Dhawan played his only ODI against Australia in October 2010 where he scored a blob. Bengal's Tiwary played his only ODI against Australia in February 2008 and scored two runs before being famously done in by a Brett Lee yorker. He slipped off the radar for the next couple of years before working his way back into form.
Kohli has scored 2131 runs, including seven centuries and eight half-centuries with a highest score of 197 at an average of 57.59 in 30 first-class matches.
Patel played the last of his 20 Tests against Sri Lanka in August 2008, where he filled in for Dhoni. He has 683 runs at an average of 29.69 and 41 catches with eight stumpings.
The selection meeting was also attended by India's new coach Duncan Fletcher.
Test squad:
MS Dhoni (C/WK), VVS Laxman (VC), Murali Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, Subramaniam Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, S Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel (WK).
Limited-overs squad:
Suresh Raina (C), R Ashwin, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh (VC), Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel, Parthiv Patel (WK), Yusuf Pathan, Wriddhiman Saha (WK), Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Manoj Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan.

Sports News: 1 out of 3 cricketers ready to put IPL ahead of co...

Sports News: 1 out of 3 cricketers ready to put IPL ahead of co...: "Sydney, June 2 (AFP) - Five-year bans handed to three Pakistani cricketers for spot-fixing offences were too lenient, according to a sur..."

1 out of 3 cricketers ready to put IPL ahead of country

Sydney, June 2 (AFP) - Five-year bans handed to three Pakistani cricketers for spot-fixing offences were too lenient, according to a survey of international players released Thursday.
Over three-quarters of respondents to the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations (FICA) players' survey, said the bans meted out to Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer were inadequate.
The trio, accused by Britain's News of the World of conspiring to deliberately bowl no-balls as part of a 'spot-fixing' betting scam last year, were banned by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
All deny wrongdoing and are appealing the verdicts at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
"The vast number of players want significant penalties to be invoked against those who are found guilty of serious corruption offences," said FICA chief executive Tim May.
"Whilst 100 percent of players say that they will report any corrupt approaches made to them, 20 percent of them do not have confidence in the ICC to treat this information confidentially."
May said the vast majority of the 45 players polled were more comfortable reporting corruption approaches to their team manager, than to the ICC Anti Corruption Unit.
Meanwhile, nearly a third of players said they would retire early from international cricket to play exclusively in the Indian Premier League, citing fears over fixture clashes curbing their participation in the money-spinning event.
"The Indian Premier League continues to be popular with the players, and its superior pay structures for the players, continue to challenge players' priority over international cricket," May said.
"When players are able to earn over ten times their annual salary from their Boards, for just seven weeks cricket in the IPL, it would be foolhardy of Boards to continue to schedule international matches during IPL and expect players to remain loyal to the Board and international cricket," he said.
The survey also found that 54 percent of the players would retire from one or more formats of the game because of too much international cricket.
Players cited the major issues facing the game as governance, corruption and an overkill of international cricket, while only a single-figure percentage said decisions made at ICC Board level were in the wider interests of the game.