India's young stars bristling with talent

In the same way that there are plenty of people who can stomach neither Wagner's Ring Cycle nor a Girls Aloud concert, there is some middle ground between the elegant sanctity of Test cricket and the streetwise kid that is Twenty20.

Step into any of the seven grounds where India host England in the next three weeks - more likely, catch what action you can on TV, radio or live text commentary - and you too might be re-captivated by the thrills and spills of 50-over-a-side cricket.

India's Test series victory against Australia in the past few weeks was played out to near-empty stadia - despite it being something of an epic, with two emotional retirements and some rousing performances from the hosts.

By contrast, all seven grounds hosting the one-day internationals - even far-flung Guwahati - will be rammed full of noisy, fanatical supporters. And that's without many of the big stars who have become so familiar to a generation of Indians.

The names Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman will be absent from the scorecards, and Sachin Tendulkar has been rested for the first three games. In their place, India's selectors have assembled a squad bristling with youthful talent, pregnant with potential.

Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir did enough damage to Australia's Test team to suggest they will be an opening pair who must be separated swiftly by England's bowlers.

But the real fascination comes in the middle order where players like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina - none older than 21 - are eagerly jostling for attention along with the more established Yuvraj Singh.

Sharma, a star at under-19 level, has already matured sufficiently to bat either positively or patiently depending on the situation. He hit a brilliant half-century against South Africa in the ICC World Twenty20 and another vital one in the first final against Australia in the Commonwealth Bank Series victory in March.

Kohli, a right-hander with a fine temperament, played all five of the matches in Sri Lanka when still a teenager and was one of India's more consistent contributors.

Many of England's players will know all about Raina, meanwhile. A natural aggressor, he hit three terrific half-centuries against Andrew Flintoff's tourists in 2006 before emerging from a lean spell with some more big scores.

Yuvraj, of course, famously rose to prominence when he and Mohammad Kaif won India the NatWest Series final at Lord's in 2002 after the bowling of Ronnie Irani and Ashley Giles had put England on the brink of victory. (He also hit six sixes off one Stuart Broad over last year so he's got a bit of a thing for England.)

There are a couple of youngsters who are hot properties in the Indian Premier League - all-rounder Yusuf Pathan and left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha - and an extremely accomplished quartet of seam bowlers.

They include Zaheer Khan, man of the series when India won the 2007 Test rubber in England, and Ishant Sharma, one of the heroes against Australia just now. So rich are India's pace-bowling stocks that the livewire extrovert Sreesanth cannot get a place.

This 15-man squad shows India's selectors in a very different light to the highly conservative, traditional mindset that has applied to picking Test teams.

There is a nod to the future, a realisation that India are assembling a cortege of players who they hope will do their country proud at the 2011 World Cup which they are hosting.

Having famously won the 1983 World Cup - a victory which turned the sport from a popular pastime to an all-consuming obsession for millions of Indians - they came close again in 2003 before suffering an embarrassment four years later when they failed to make the knockout stages.

England also had a poor World Cup in the Caribbean, and since then both teams have employed new coaches and been occasionally brilliant, though sometimes awful, in one-day internationals.

It will be a hard series to predict the winners, even if England are hunting their first one-day series win in India since David Gower's men triumphed in 1984-85. (According to one source, Ravi Shastri was player of the series although India lost 4-1!)

But with so many match winners on each side - let's not forget that England have players of the ilk of Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen - it's a real opportunity for both teams to serve up some enticing fare.