Sehwag axed in favour of Pujara for England series

Veteran opener Virender Sehwag has been axed in favour of the in-form Cheteshwar Pujara for the forthcoming one-day series against England.

Sehwag's omission was widely expected following his poor run of form and his exclusion for the final one-day international against Pakistan on Sunday which India won by 10 runs.

Sehwag has been woefully out of form in recent times and averaged just 22.54 in the 11 ODIs he has played in the last 12 months with just a single half century.

Pujara, on the other hand, has been in great form in domestic cricket and created quite a splash in the nine Test matches he has played so far, hitting an average of 58.53.

Apart from Sehwag, all the other members of the squad that played against Pakistan were retained.

Sehwag has the highest individual score of 219 in ODIs and has tallied 8,273 runs from 251 ODIs with 15 centuries.

Two other non-performers Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma, however, held onto their places despite a string of failures during the past few months.

The first three ODIs between India and England will be played in Rajkot, Kochi and Ranchi, on January 11, 15 and 19 respectively.

Squad: MS Dhoni (Captain), Gautam Gambhir, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashok Dinda, Shami Ahmed.

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