Selection Papplu is here again!
What do Dinesh Mongia, Ajit Agarkar and Piyush Chawla have in common? They are names that our blessed national selectors threw at us over this decade while picking the team to do battle at cricket's most important tournament - the World Cup.
If Mongia, the left-handed middle-order bat whose left-arm spin bowling made the umpires see red, was a choice that raised several eyebrows before the 2003 edition in South Africa, the selectors went one step ahead by bringing back a totally jaded Ajit Agarkar for the 2007 edition in the Caribbean Islands.
This time, the five wise men have decided that it has to be Piyush Chawla who should continue this dubious selection legacy whereby a player finds his way into the team despite good performances or past glory. Those of us who were lucky to see India's triumph at the Lord's in 1983, still find it difficult to place Sunil Valson, who reportedly was chosen to add variety to the bowling with his left-arm seam-ups.
Maybe, this is the selectors' way of unleashing a "surprise weapon" at the unsuspecting opposition. For a player who last represented India in an ODI on July 2, 2008, to be even part of a 15-member team should have come as a shock. We will definitely have eager television reporters chasing Chawla in South Africa for the customary sound bite.
Of course, what would be more interesting is whether captain MS Dhoni actually plays Chawla in the remaining three one-day matches against South Africa, now that the leg spinner has been thought fit to represent India at the World Cup ahead of arguably better tweakers like Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra. And if Dhoni prefers to have Chawla ferry the drinks trolley, it straightaway raises questions about the veracity of this selection.
Given our repeated trysts with selectoral idiosyncrasies, there is a sense of deja vu across the country with respect to the manner that the five wise men have often gone about picking one such "papplu" during each major event. So, let's keep Chawla aside and consider other crucial aspects that we, as pseudo cricket experts, need to analyze.
For starters, is it the best team that we the BCCI thinks will bring us our second World Cup and what may possibly be a parting gift to one of the world's all-time great cricketers in Sachin Tendulkar? At first glance, one tends to believe that this is so.
We have six specialist batsmen who can win matches on their own accord plus two all-rounders in skipper MS Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan. A four-pronged fast bowling unit will be spearheaded by Zaheer Khan while Harbhajan Singh will be in charge of a three-man spinning team that makes up the 15-member squad.
Despite injury worries to our three top batsmen - Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir - the wise men have gone ahead with them as they did with Praveen Kumar. Virat Kohli has been in prime form of late and merited an automatic selection while in the case of Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh it is about ability and past performance.
If ability is the criterion, then Rohit Sharma should definitely have made the grade as is the case with the elder of the two Pathans. The middle order bat has played some blinders in ODIs and is possibly as talented as a Raina or even a Kohli. And, his occasional off-spin can help you get wickets like Dhoni found out at Centurion.
Coming to the bowling department, the reason for keeping out Sreesanth and Ishant Sharma is ostensibly to keep them fit and fresh for the longer version of the game. A noble thought indeed, but marred by the fact that these two fast bowlers will be turning out for the IPL before Team India emplanes for England later this summer.
While Ashish Nehra has been having a great time with the ball of late as is Munaf Patel, it remains to be seen how Dhoni copes with their atrocious fielding abilities in the tournament where fielding abilities could prove to be the deciding factor amongst the top five or six teams.
The thinking, though is quite clear. India will go into matches with seven batsmen including Dhoni and four bowlers that may well have two of the spinning variety. So, we can well imagine that Zaheer and Harbhajan will be the strike force with the rest of the bowlers playing second fiddle and some like Pathan, Raina and Yuvraj joining hands to bowl out ten overs between them.
This being the case, it looks almost likely that India's strategy on docile sub-continental wickets will be batman oriented where they either pile up a huge total or chase down anything that the opposition sets as a target.
Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag (vice-captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Praveen Kumar, Munaf Patel, R Ashwin, Piyush Chawla
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