who is India's No. 3 for ODIs?,Will India's No. 3 please stand up?

So who is India's No. 3 for ODIs? Gautam Gambhir? Only when Sachin Tendulkar doesn't play. But wait a minute, didn't Mahendra Singh Dhoni feature at one-down in the Napier ODI with Tendulkar opening with Virender Sehwag? Gambhir didn't even get to bat then.
Suresh Raina would be a close guess, but he has done it only five times out of his past 11 matches, and on 15 occasions during his 61-match career.
How about Yuvraj Singh? Not really, having batted at No. 3 14 times in his 228 games. But he can make a surprise appearance every now and then.

So the better question to ask is, who isn't India's No. 3? Not Sehwag and Tendulkar either. Sehwag though, didn't rule out Gambhir's return to the opening slot. "He could come in my place, or Sachin's place. It depends on how we go ahead," he said.

That leaves only Yusuf Pathan, who hasn't done so in his 18-match career so far, but with this Indian team who can say?

If there is no particular No. 3, how can the batting order be certain? And against a team as methodical as New Zealand, the approach works. New Zealand have a plan for every batsman which seemed to work in the Twenty20s. They also have strategies for different phases of a bowling innings, which are disturbed by a shuffling batting order.

"It's good for the Indian team because if someone can bat at three and five, and can change their batting order, they get more opportunities to score," Sehwag said "They were surprised when MS [Dhoni] came to bat at three [in Napier]. They didn't know what to do. They thought maybe MS had come to hit, but he played sensibly and batted through the overs."

"We have Sachin, Gautam and lower down the order, myself, who can do this job," Dhoni said. "But in between we change that also, so the opposition can't really be sure that the batsmen will play their innings in a certain way. At times he is given the responsibility to play aggressive cricket too, because the opposition keeps thinking he will look to take the innings through."

with the current squad it seems every batsman buys the idea of this adaptability. A big test for this scheme will come when the team hits a bad patch. For Dhoni and Gary Kirsten, it has been so far so good. As of now, they seem to like the idea that New Zealand will be fretting over who will come to bat at No. 3 on Friday at the Westpac Stadium.