India will not go into the one-day series against Zimbabwe full of confidence. Normally, they would be expected to wallop Zimbabwe on home pitches, but this is an Indian team that has been notoriously top-heavy in the past, and enters this series without some of its top players. It is a common refrain that when Sachin Tendulkar gets out the team gives up hope. Well, he's already out. And the man expected to open with Sourav Ganguly in his place, the swashbuckling, free-stroking Virender Sehwag, will also be missing from action, after suffering an unfortunate shoulder injury when diving on the hard turf at Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla in the recent second Test.

Ganguly is back in form and hungry, which is a good sign for India, but the rest of the batting is deeply unbalanced. The selectors have opted to leave out Yuvraj Singh, Hemang Badani and Reetinder Singh Sodhi, and have selected a middle order of Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Mohammad Kaif and Dinesh Mongia: a collection of gatherers without a finisher. There will be plenty of people to steady the ship if an early wicket falls, but no-one to propel them to a 70-runs-in-ten-overs finish.

However, India might just have found their missing allrounder in Sanjay Bangar. He wasn't a force with the ball in the Tests, but in one-dayers he can be counted on to deliver a steady, accurate wicket-to-wicket spell. For Railways, he is a steady accumulator at the top of the order, but he also has an impressive fourth gear, as Zimbabwe found out in the Nagpur Test. He is said to have impressed India's then-captain Mohammad Azharuddin with some slam-bang performances down the order in the 1998 Wills Trophy, a domestic one-day tournament.

Bangar might not go in first at Faridabad, though. In next year's World Cup, two of Tendulkar, Sehwag and Ganguly will open. Bangar, if he remains in the team, will probably come in at No. 6, the position the team management might opt to familarise him with now. That leaves Shiv Sunder Das to open with Ganguly, and if the captain is out early, there will be plenty of men to consolidate, but few likely to accelerate.

Zimbabwe, meanwhile, are in the curious position of going into the one-day matches without their star performer from the Tests. The one-day team was selected before the Tests, and Ray Price wasn't part of it; strangely, he wasn't asked to stay on, even after winning a dramatic battle with Tendulkar. Zimbabwe's key batsmen – the Flowers, Stuart Carlisle, Alistair Campbell and even likely pinch-hitter Travis Friend – all showed signs of good nick in the Tests, and if they can put competitive totals on the board, India will be under pressure.

Teams (probable)
India 1 Sourav Ganguly (capt), 2 SS Das, 3 Rahul Dravid, 4 VVS Laxman, 5 Dinesh Mongia, 6 Sanjay Bangar, 7 Ajay Ratra (wk), 8 Ajit Agarkar, 9 Zaheer Khan, 10 Harbhajan Singh, 11 Anil Kumble.

Zimbabwe 1 Dion Ebrahim, 2 Grant Flower, 3 Stuart Carlisle (capt), 4 Andy Flower (wk), 5 Alistair Campbell, 6 Craig Wishart, 7 Douglas Marillier, 8 Heath Streak, 9 Travis Friend, 10 Gary Brent, 11 Pommie Mbangwa.

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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