Who should have the final word on team selection? Captain & Coach Selectors & Board Discuss Poll Results Archive

Who should have the final word on team selection?
- The Appeal

The Offside

The captain and the team management should have the final word on team selection.

Look at it this way, if Sourav Ganguly leads India to a defeat in a Test match, who takes the maximum blame for it? Naturally, it is the captain. The media are quick to jump on any tactical errors made by the captain, who is always under the microscope. If a series is lost, then the first thing that comes to mind is the question, 'should the captain be sacked?' When the onus is so severely on the captain to produce results, surely, he must be given the team he wants, in order to produce the results.

There is an old adage that goes, 'A captain is only as good as his team.' Results from various different countries, and indeed different tours, suggest that this is true. A captain can be magnificent when he has confidence in his players and the team pulls together as one. In the recently concluded second Test at Kandy, Harvinder Singh bowled just 23.3 overs of a total of 145 over bowled. Clearly, that implies that Ganguly was not entirely comfortable with the way the Railways mediumpacer performed, and hence underbowled him. This meant that the captain had to bowl himself, perhaps a touch more than he would have liked.

Another vital component in this matter is the input of the coach. After the players, John Wright is the man closest to the action. Having taken up the challenging job as coach of the Indian team, Wright deserves to be given the resources he considers best to deliver the goods. On wickets in Sri Lanka that offered some assistance to the mediumpacers, the Indian team management asked that Ajit Agarkar be sent as a replacement for the injured Javagal Srinath. Having understood the conditions in Sri Lanka and the need for a bowler with genuine pace, the team management turned to the board only to be rejected.

This means that they now go into the final Test with the knowledge that they are playing a mediumpacer who they would have rather left out. That is no way to begin a deciding Test match. It’s a situation that could have easily been avoided, if the team management had the final word when it came to team selection.

The Onside

The board and the selectors should have the final word on team selection.

It is not the job of the captain or the coach to select teams. What they must do, is go out and play. When it comes to picking the team there are five men, eminently qualified for the job, appointed by the board specifically for this purpose, making up a committee. With one representative from each zone, there is a fair chance that the selection committee will come up with reasonable unbiased choices at the end of the day.

If the captain was given a free hand in selection, he would certainly pick players who he was most comfortable with. In that lies the serious danger that he could pick them for all the wrong reasons. The captain might choose a player who came from the same state as himself, or a player who endorsed a certain product… More than anything else, this leaves room for a lot of unhealthy speculation in the media. When this begins, the captain is under further pressure and performance suffers as a result.

Out on tour, there should be nothing that distracts a captain and his coach from their task - bringing the team together and forging a winning unit. Their primary job is the energy draining and time consuming one of winning matches. Anything that draws attention away from this must be viewed as a distraction, and team selection is one such thing.

In the current set up, the captain and the coach are free to give their suggestions to the board and the selectors. The selectors and board officials then consider the various factors involved before they take a decision. That is certainly the best way to operate.

Archive

• Should Rahul Dravid bat at number three? (21 August 2001)
• Should a younger fast bowler have been selected instead of Venkatesh Prasad? (14 August 2001)