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India's Manish Pandey (L) and Ajinkya Rahane during training. / AFP PHOTO / PUNIT PARANJPE
The likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Dinesh Karthik alongside newcomers Shreyas Iyer & Siddarth Kaul will all look to this ODI series to stake a claim to be in the mix for future assignments.
Rahane will try to bounce back in this ODI series after failing miserably in the Test series. He is likely to bat at no.3 spot after Kohli decided to take a break.
Rahane has 4 consecutive half centuries in his last 4 ODI innings.
He has 7 half centuries this year but has converted only one of them to a hundred. His overall ODI conversion rate is 11.54% (3 tons, 23 fifties).
Rahane has a topsy-turvy record against SL: He has registered his highest score against Sri Lanka (111). However, if we exclude that, he has scored only 105 runs in 7 matches against them at a batting average of 15.00 and strike rate of 65.21.
Dinesh Karthik has played every single position from 1 to 7 and has scored a half century in each: However, he is yet to score an ODI century.
Karthik has scored 9 ODI half centuries in all, but none have been converted to a ton.
He has a batting average of 30.00, which is acceptable, but his strike rate of 73.28 is very low for modern day cricket. As context, Greg Chappell, who predominantly played ODI cricket in the 1970s, has a better ODI strike rate than Dinesh Karthik (75.70 for Chappell vs 73.28 for Karthik).
Manish Pandey will also be looking to continue his good form in this series.
He has scored 2 half centuries and one century in his ODI career and has been not out 6 times in 16 innings.
If he is promoted up the batting order, he will look to make it count. He has batting average of 43.00 and a decent strike rate of 95.76.
Newbies Siddarth Kaul and Shreyas Iyer will also hope to make an impact in this series.
Iyer has already played 3 T20I matches for India but has not exactly grabbed his chance with both hands. He has scored 29 runs in 2 innings with a highest score of 23.
Kaul has taken 98 wickets in his list A career. He has managed an average of 22.20, coupled with an economy rate of 4.97, both standout figures in modern List A cricket. He also took consecutive 3-fors for India A against New Zealand A in October of this year (shortly before the IND v NZ ODI series).
First Published: December 9, 2017, 2:36 PM IST