Sachin Tendulkar has become the eighth and most high-profile India player to return home through injury this summer, further delaying his Holy Grail quest for a 100th international century and giving his side's management a selection headache before Tuesday's second one-day international against England at the Rose Bowl.
Tendulkar has been ruled out for the next four to six weeks because of the toe injury which kept him out of Saturday's opening ODI in Durham, India's the team manager, Shivlal Yadav, confirmed. He joins Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma and Rohit Sharma, who have all hobbled home from this accident-prone tour.
With Manoj Tiwary and Ravindra Jadeja already on their way to England, India said no replacement would be sought for Tendulkar. But with a maladroitness which seems to have marked their every move this summer, on and off the field, they then announced that Subramaniam Badrinath would be joining the party.
Of the replacements only Tiwary has any chance of making it to England in time for Tuesday's match. That means India will probably be selecting from 13 fit players. They have only six batsmen and that includes their wicketkeeper and captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, so they will face England with five bowlers. The batsman Rohit Sharma, who suffered a broken finger at the weekend, could well be replaced by the leg-spinner Amit Mishra.
Tendulkar's next match could be the opening ODI against England in India next month, on 14 October. This has been the least productive of his five tours to England; he averaged only 34.12 in the recent Test series with a best of 91 in the second innings at The Oval.
England appear embarrassed by riches and Ian Bell, who proved a more than adequate stand-in for Jonathan Trott as the Test No3, now has his eyes on Kevin Pietersen's No4 ODI slot. When England resume playing Test cricket in the new year, Trott is likely to bat at No3, as his Test average of 57.79 gets him in the top 10 in history, nudging between Wally Hammond (58.45) and Garry Sobers (57.78). But he will have to keep producing to prevent Bell pinching his job.
Bell's chances of prising Pietersen out of his favourite position are only slightly better, even though it is understood that Pietersen's "resting" is not unconnected with his ODI record over the past three years, which has been woeful. In 2009 his seven innings produced 132 runs (average 18.86), in 2010 nine innings brought him 153 (17.00) and this year 14 innings have yielded 401 (28.64).
Bell is known to want to bat in the top four in both forms of the game and, when asked whether he was involved in a shoot-out with Pietersen, he replied: "Obviously Kev is being rested so I need to show Andy Flower that, if it comes to a decision, then I can put my name up there to be one of the first on the team sheet.
"Four is where I've batted for Warwickshire and for England in the past. When I played up the order for England a few years ago I wasn't as good a player as I am now, so it's nice to get that opportunity again. I've got to be flexible and we have a batting order that can chop and change. Whether I bat six or four or open I just have to be flexible." Ideally England would want their best batsman, Bell, and Pietersen to bat in the top four in one-day cricket. But that is difficult, with the captain, Alastair Cook, opening and Trott, again, looking formidable at first drop.
Bell, reflecting on his old No6 place in the one-day side, added: "The majority of the time I would probably go in with 15 overs to go if batting has gone well so I would have to work on scoring boundaries from ball one. I'm not the kind of guy who is going to hit the ball into a few rows back and I have to go over extra cover or whatever and use the skills that I have and find boundaries that way. I try to learn off Morgs [Eoin Morgan] in how he plays the spinners and scores boundaries off the front and back foot."
