Abhishek Nayar at Test #6?

[Ibes]

Unless we drop Vijay MO is sewn up between Kohli, Rahane and Sharma and even if we drop Vijay we could go with Mukund as our opener. He is someone I want to believe is a better opening option than Murali.

[philcric]

I haven't seen him bowling at FC level, his bowling in IPL was pretty bad. But he must be doing something right because he is getting wickets. I always believed you have to try/do something different to beat better teams in their own backyard. Personally, it's more painful to watch my team's listless bowling than low batting scores. "If" Nayar's bowling is anywhere close to decent, this line-up is worth a try in SA in tests. S Dhawan M Vijay / A Rahane C Pujara V Kohli R Sharma A Nayar R Jadeja *+ M Dhoni B Kumar Z Khan U Yadav The 3 main pacers have to go all out in shortish spells and take bulk of the wickets. Nayar and Jadeja the support bowlers have to bowl consistent longish spells and chip in with a wicket or two. Jadeja instead of Ashwin because of the right handers in SA batting line up, also Jadeja can be potentially a better batsman, also he's been bowling better than Ashwin anyway. MSD at #8 ... The best chance for Dhoni to succeed as a batsman in SA is to just go for it. His game is not suited to conventionally build an innings in those conditions. He'll be better off leaving/blocking the good length deliveries and going all out against full length and short deliveries. Forget the 1's and the 2's (that's what gets him into trouble most abroad imo, where he tries to nudge the good length balls with his spoon technique), his scoring pattern should be more of 0's, 4's and 6's. Batting at 8 with the tail might give him the incentive to bat this way.

[India-KXIP fan]

has he played on any A tours?

This. Hasn't been on A tours, recently anyway. So far he's proved he can perform on slow tracks.