Can Team India conquer the last Champions Trophy crown?

It was a great finish to the Indian Premier League (IPL) despite the fixing saga that has dented the image of the tournament to a great extent. The star-studded Mumbai Indians team has finally lifted the IPL trophy under their young captain Rohit Sharma. Cricket fans have been so engrossed with the IPL for the last seven or eight weeks that they ignored the other cricket matches happening across the globe.

Now that Team India’s next international fixture is the upcoming Champions Trophy 2013 in England, the focus and attention shifts to the country in which the game was invented. It is always exciting to watch cricket in England, especially in the conditions where the contest between bat and the ball will be even as the wickets there provide an equal opportunity for the batsmen and the bowlers to dominate each other.

The Indian selection committee had picked the squad for the Champions Trophy a month before the start of the tournament and that must have given the players adequate time to erase any technical flaws in their game to adjust their playing style as per the conditions in England. However, all the players in the squad have been playing in the IPL which probably is not the best way to prepare themselves for England. We all know that the amount of swing the bowlers can extract on the English soil which could make batting difficult in bowler-friendly conditions. It’s essential for the team to have technically well-equipped batsmen who can adjust to the conditions and score runs at a free flow.

Some of the most experienced batsmen of the Indian team have retired recently and a few are out of form and hence, they could not be a part of the squad that is touring England. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul David have retired and they were amongst the very few batsmen who could adjust quickly and play very well on the English soil. Remember India included Rahul Dravid in the ODI team in the 2011 England tour as many players struggled to score runs. Players such as Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh have been left out due to their poor form. Considering the team that India has got, it’s going to be a challenge for the batsmen to perform well in the Champions Trophy.