Dhoni has the team for 2015 world cup and the future

MS Dhoni, who is battling charges of governance on a personal front, must be a happy man professionally. With the Indian team putting in a cracking performance in the Champions Trophy and mainly Dhoni having a "young" team at his disposal which he has yearning for, he couldn`t have asked for more. Dhoni always wanted young players who are great fielders and also have the flexibility to play according to his plans. Ofcourse he doesn`t want many seniors around to challenge him for the captain`s post.

The present Indian team has top notch fielders led by Jadeja, Raina, Kohli, Karthik and Rohit. The pace attack suddenly looks sharp with the swinging abilities of Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, the raw pace of Umesh Yadav and the pace and experience of Ishant Sharma. The spin attack looks good with the emergence of Jadeja, the stability of Ashwin  and ofcourse we still have Pragyan Ojha as a backup and the lurking presence of Bhajji.

Even though the team is yet to prove itself in the longer formats and in tough conditions like in Australia and South Africa, the wave of fresh air from this team reminisces of the team in Champions Trophy in 2000 when Sourav Ganguly embarked on building a new team after the match fixing scandals (sheer coincidence!). The Champions Trophy in 2000 saw the advent of Ganguly as a captain and fresh new players like Yuvraj and Zaheer who served the team with distinction in the last decade.

Apart from the one day team, Dhoni has effectively built up a new test team also. As I said in one of my previous post (http://ramnarayanan1112.blogspot.in/2013/03/dhoni-on-very-safe-wicket.html) Pujara and Kohli have effectively replaced Dravid and Laxman. The openers slots have been taken by Vijay and Dhawan and with Sachin Tendulkar`s imminent retirement this season, Dhoni will look up to Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane to replace him. He also has an another option with Dinesh Karthik`s superb form with the bat to add to his keeping and fielding skills. We also hear that Gambhir, who is only 31 years old, has enlisted the help of WV Raman to sort his batting woes.

All this portends well for Indian cricket professionally but what about the administrative side which is caught    in one of the biggest scandals in the history of cricket? Well watch out for this space.