The fringe is the fulcrum

UMPIRE'S POST

Is Twenty20's brightest batsman being denied the chance to prove his worth in Test cricket?

We often talk of players having a deep impact on their team, so much so that the team gets identified by the player. Few would remember who else played for Argentina in the 1986 soccer World Cup. The England cricket team that adopted bodyline was Douglas Jardine's. As Wasim Akram says, while bowling to India in the 1990s, he knew they only had to get Sachin and the rest would follow.

However, hardly anyone would have had as big an impact on a team by being out of it as Yuvraj Singh is having now on the Indian Test XI. Before the Kotla Test, he was supposed to be breathing down the necks of Ganguly and Laxman. After it, he is haunting Dinesh Karthik. Both Laxman and Ganguly have been doing well in Tests and Karthik was the team's highest run scorer in England, India's last Test series.

It has helped that Yuvraj is a star in the limited-overs side and the world's brightest batting in the Twenty20 format. These are matches played with greater frequency and attract more viewers and spectators.

Tests, on the other hand, are infrequent and attract intermittent bursts of viewership in offices and homes. Thus, it is easy to forget Laxman's value, or that of Jaffer. These two hardly appear in commercials. Apart from the 60- or 70-odd days of Test cricket in a year, their life is spent playing matches where tea is served in plastic cups rather than bone china and on practice grounds that wouldn't encourage you to dive.

There is also a mediaswell "" as opposed to groundswell "" of clamour to draft Yuvraj into the Test team. Even people not connected to Indian cricket have demanded it, saying that "the form of his life" is being wasted.

But how will that be done? Before the England series, there was a chance that Karthik would be asked to keep and Yuvraj might step in for Dhoni. With the rise in Dhoni's stature since then, that option is ruled out.

It cannot be denied that Yuvraj has not been given enough opportunities to fulfill his promise in Tests. A prime example is the 2004 series in Pakistan in which he had to make way for captain Ganguly, coming back from injury, in the third Test despite scoring a century in 110 balls on a green top in the second Test at Lahore.

Right now, he is the sword hanging over the heads of Test batsmen, especially those who do not play limited-overs cricket. Sooner or later injustice could be done to one of them. But, perhaps, Yuvraj will be able to turn in a show that will gloss over the injustice.