Bagai pleased with World Cup preparation

Canada captain Ashish Bagai is pleased with the state of his side ahead of the World Cup after recently returning from a short tour to India.

Bagai believes the trip has given him and the team's selectors an idea of the players who will feature in the final squad for the showpiece event as well as giving the side crucial experience of the conditions they will confront at the World Cup, hosted in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh early next year.

"It's been useful for two reasons," he said. "It helped us get used to conditions, weather and environment. The second has been the fact that we have been able to try different players for those four or five vacant spots in the squad.

"We have managed to achieve both the objectives thanks to good wickets and excellent facilities. Almost everyone we have here has played a game. The only thing is that six to seven of our main players were not on tour due to mixed reasons, but we have still done well."

Canada started off the tour in Delhi, before moving to Raipur in Central India and then Nagpur for games at one of the venues of the World Cup, before winding up the tour in Mumbai. "In Delhi we played against club sides. Then in Raipur and Nagpur we played the XIs from the state Ranji sides. In Raipur we got an opportunity to play at the new international stadium which was a great experience," said Bagai.

The tour was a chance for Canada to blood some youngsters and Bagai was pleased that they took the opportunity. "Rizwan Cheema, Khurram Chouhan, Umar Bhatti, Johnson Davison, Jeff Barnett and Ian Billcliff were all missing. We lacked their experience but it was a good tour for the juniors. We have had Hiral Patel scoring a 90-100 in every game against good state sides as an opener. Then 19-year-old Ravindu Gunasekara has got a couple of good scores. As a team we have scored 300 in every game which is a good sign. The tour has been a great opportunity for the juniors. Our bowling needs to improve, but in terms of training and conditions it has gone off well."

Unfortunately for Bagai, he was stuck on the sidelines with an ongoing knee injury but he's doing all he can to reach the World Cup before heading for surgery. "I have an ongoing injury for the last 12 months called the femoral syndrome on left knee. This basically causes a lot of pain when bones touch each other. I have been busy with physiotherapy. I have been somehow just trying to manage the situation till the World Cup. I will go in for a surgery after that because it involves a 10-month recovery period."