Selectors should be accountable to their own consciences, not regional bosses
You must be joking, Mr Borde
V Ramnarayan
10-Jul-2001
You must be joking, Mr Borde! For once, the Indian captain cannot call
the selectors jokers, because he seems to be the perpetrator of some
of the cruel jokes, by now endemic, on Indian cricket and young Indian
cricketers, to go by media reports. While Sachin Tendulkar's injury
must be a big blow to India's aspirations in the Sri Lanka tri-series,
the selectors have missed an opportunity to try out a regular opener
in his place. I do not subscribe to the view that Shiv Sunder Das
should be protected from the evils of one-day batting; the young man
appears perfectly capable of handling the challenges of the shorter
game with a straight bat. Either he or Sadagopan Ramesh, another much
maligned opener, could more easily have stepped into Tendulkar's shoes
than Amay Khurasia, resurrected from oblivion, we learn, thanks to the
skipper's selective amnesia. Alternatively, the brilliant young pair
of Vinayak Mane and Gautam Gambhir would have been an inspired choice.
They could play uninhibitedly at the top and enable Ganguly to bat in
the vital middle overs.
The selectors' sense of humour comes to the fore when the chairman
states: "He (Khurasiya) has been among the runs in recent times. He
opened the innings for Madhya Pradesh and Central Zone and did well.
He is an excellent striker. He looks like a batsman who can destroy
the bowlers." Just change the names of state and zone and this superb
comment could apply equally to almost any other opener in India. And
Khurasiya has played ten ODIs in which he has aggregated a mere 137
runs.
Young Yuvraj Singh comes back into the squad at the expense of another
young left-hander, Dinesh Mongia, whose omission defies logic. Not for
a moment am I suggesting that one is better than the other, but every
young player deserves to be given a reasonably lengthy trial.
Strangely, good form in the nets has been cited as the reason for
preferring Yuvraj Singh to Mongia, who played at least one matchwinning innings in Zimbabwe. And, if the left hander's pronounced
tendency to commit himself on the front foot did not exactly inspire
confidence in Zimbabwe, neither did Virendra Sehwag's display suggest
that he really belonged to the big league, especially in the bowling
department. The double standards when it comes to giving young players
a fair trial are even more evident in the sacking of Harvinder Singh.
Rahul Sanghvi's inclusion is about the only rational change made in
the tour party, though why he was not selected to tour Zimbabwe will
remain a mystery, just as Sairaj Bahutule's selection was. The
selectors inform us that the names of the over-the-hill Joshi and the
unfit Kartik were discussed. Why should any time be wasted over such
pointless discussions?
Mr Lele and Mr Borde are reportedly perturbed that "we are not
delivering the goods in the final." One reason could be that all this
chopping and changing by the selectors must be doing the Indian team's
morale no good. It's time our selectors became accountable to their
own consciences rather than their regional bosses.