Mystery of Sehwag's availability continues

The mystery of Virender Sehwag's availability in the Twenty20 World Cup continues after he missed Monday's practice session.

The Indian team trained at the Lady Bay middle in Nottingham, but Sehwag, recovering from an injury, was conspicuous by his absence.

Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Harbhajan Singh also did not travel for the optional practice session, preferring to stay back in the hotel.

Sehwag is recovering from a shoulder injury that he picked up during the Indian Premier League and missed the first match of the WT20 tournament against Bangladesh. The team is hoping the opener can play some part in the tournament, but it looks highly unlikely that will happen anytime soon as he is yet to take part in a full nets session since arriving in England.

India coach Gary Kirsten on Friday had said the team is happy to keep Sehwag in the squad and not replace him since there is a chance that he will take part in the latter stages of the tournament.

'He [Sehwag] was picked in the squad and then he got this injury... and we felt that this injury was not serious to miss the whole tournament. If a player of the calibre of Virender Sehwag can be available for any part of the tournament we want to keep him there,' Kirsten had said.

Since Rohit Sharma is doing a good job as a replacement opener, the team is in no hurry to rush Sehwag back.

The Indian team also chose not to oblige the waiting media, and no player turned up to speak with waiting journalists after the practice session that stretched to nearly three hours on a bright, sunny day in Nottingham.

"It is an optional practice session and no player will be talking to the media today," media manager Anirudh Chaudhry clarified, when asked why no player wants to talk with the Indian press.

It is obvious that the squad is unhappy with the Indian media following publication of stories of an alleged rift between Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virender Sehwag. It is learnt that they will speak to journalists only when obligatory, as per rules of the tournament.

Interestingly, the West Indies' team, training at the same venue, was more than happy to oblige Indian journalists and coach John Dyson came up and spoke to them.

"Even though we are in a comfortable position [after beating Australia], we are fully focused on winning every match," Dyson said.

After their respective sessions, players from both teams mingled with each other. West Indies captain Chris Gayle exchanged a few light moments with quite a few Indian players.