With a second-string side departing for the African country to play a short series, a glance at things to watch out for...
Karnataka TRIO
Not surprisingly, there is a strong Karnataka flavour to the batting line-up. KL Rahul, Karun Nair and Manish Pandey, expected to form the backbone of the batting, are from the southern state. Of the trio, Pandey will be more closely watched. The dashing middle-order batsman scored a century in his last game in India colours against Australia in Sydney.
Opening salvo
There is interest over the opening pair. While KL Rahul is likely to open, Faiz Fazal of Vidarbha is the only one in the squad to have opened regularly in all formats in domestic cricket.
All eyes on Dhoni
As India assignments go, this is likely to be an easy one for Dhoni, but the limited-over skipper will certainly remain under scanner. He is coming off an unusually poor IPL, where his team avoided the wooden spoon with a win off the last ball, and his handling of R Ashwin was questioned too. There are also question marks over the skipper’s ability to survive till the 2019 World Cup.
Zimbabwe struggles
The minnows sacked their coach and captain before this important series (for them at least), and that is never a good sign. After showing encouraging signs since returning to Test fold in 2011, optimism has waned of late. In the World T20 earlier this year, they crashed out in the qualifying stage after suffering a huge loss against Afghanistan.