Rotating the senior openers during the CB Series 2012/13
It was the Indian captain MS Dhoni’s one of the bold decisions which had the flop result. Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir – this trio was in the centre stage of talk during the 2011–12 Commonwealth Bank Series (ODI tri-series) in Australia (Australia, India and Sri Lanka were the teams in that series).
Though all were still good batsmen, Dhoni was in concern due to their slow fielding. So, at the beginning of that series, the Indian captain decided to follow the rotating system between these senior cricketers as two out of those three players were included in the playing XI. The other remaining player replaced one of them in the next game.
But while the captain was heavily criticised for that rotation policy, he also struggled to maintain the flow of that policy due to some good batting form of the opener Gambhir, and the weak bating forms of Sachin and Sehwag. According to some media reports, the policy was also hurting the team spirit.
So, finally, at the late moment of that tri-series, Dhoni decided to drop that rotation policy and included all those three players in the playing XI. Though India fought till the end, they just failed to qualify for the final of that tournament.