Premier fast bowler of Indian team “Praveen Kumar” has been eliminated from playing ICC World Cup 2011 (starting from February/19/2011) because of his injured elbow, hence BCCI has decided to make Sreesanth to take place of Praveen Kumar. This decision came right after the day when Praveen Kumar went through a fitness test held at NCA (National Cricket Academy) in the heart of Bangalore to conclude if he is fit for the One Day International series against South Africa in January 2011.
Praveen Kumar, was sent back from S. Africa to India after getting report of his unfit status (i.e. he could not recover from elbow injury). Nevertheless he is getting consultation from Doctor Andrew Wallace, who is an old surgeon for several Indian players namely Sachin Tendulkar. Praveen kumar has been regularly playing with Indian team in the One Day International matches for past two years and he was planned to be a premier bowler for the World Cup 2011, but sadly his elbow injury is not healing in time and hence making him ruled out of the tournament.
Whereas, Sreesanth is a well established Test bowler but he hasn’t played impressive as of yet in the One Day International matches. He has been part of 51 One Day International matches in the time span of 5 years since the start of his career at the year 2005, and he has bowling economy rate of approximately 6 runs in a over. However, he has performed impressively in the last two One Day International matches that he has played since 2010 (January), by taking 7 wickets for just mere seventy seven runs.
Phew! there are a lot of injuries happening in not just Indian squad but also with England and Australian side as well. These injuries may impact the performance of these teams which are favorite for the world cup and it may give advantage to other teams who are secondary favorites for world cup (i.e. Pakistan and South Africa).
From major teams, we have only Pakistani team who has all of his players fit and mentally prepared as well for the biggest event of them all -ICC World Cup, other than them other teams are having injury problems.
But even with Pakistan, even if they are not suffering from physical injuries they surely are suffering from off-site distraction with stories like 3 top players of Pakistani team getting major bans. However, Shahid Khan Afridi has expressed that these off-site distractions will not effect the team effort and they are mentally prepared for the tournament.