Selection Madness

The brainlessness of our cricket selection is coming home to roost in the Sri Lanka Test series that has just started. As I said in one of my earlier posts, our cricketers are playing an awful lot of international and IPL cricket these days. Therefore some sort of intelligent partitioning is required to keep our lads fresh and motivated. There is also the difference in approach required for limited overs and Test cricket. All this cries out for creating specialist teams for different forms of the game.

We seem to understand quite well that increasingly attacking forms of batsmanship are required as we move from Test cricket to ODI to T20. For batsmen, we seem to have a reasonably clear understanding of who the specialists for different forms fo the game are. Other than occasional howlers like sticking with Yuvraj in Tests. However we are completely confused when it comes to bowlers.

Once upon a time, Sreesanth and Ishant were wonderful attacking bowlers who were capable of bowling long testing spells in search of wickets. They were occasionally expensive, but would not give up their aggression just because they got carted around for a few boundaries. Whenever these guys bowled well in Tests, we threw them at batsman in ODIs. And very often they got hammered. And lost confidence.

Our current selection committee chairman Krishnamachari Srikkanth was an entertaining batsman. He played the signature innings for India in the finals of the 1983 world cup - fearlessly hooking Andy Roberts for a six, and imperiously smashing him through the covers on his knees. However one thing Srikkanth will never be accused of is thinking and planning. I remember him smashing Dipak Patel straight down the throat of deep-midwicket in the initial overs of a world cup match in 1992. Patel was a Newzealand off-spinner who opened the bowling in that match. The only man outside the circle was deep midwicket, and Srikkanth hit the ball right down his throat.

That brings us right back to the current Test match in Galle. It should come as no surprise to anyone that our bowlers are struggling. The second day getting rained off came as a welcome relief.