The old reliables

After all the controversy and even intrigue surrounding it in the past few months, the Indian team for the cricket World Cup squad has been announced. The much-debated experimentations with the team are over, and the public""and the team itself""can focus on the objective""winning the World Cup. There are no surprises in the selection. Nine of the 15 squad members picked have represented India in the World Cup before, and most of the other six have played consistently well in the past year or so. So it can be argued that the experimentation has not worked""how could it have if the end result is reversion to a safety-first reliance on experience? Indeed, the team is like the Congress members of the UPA government: lots of experience and little new blood.

The inclusion of Virender Sehwag and Irfan Pathan adds weight to this argument because neither has impressed for a long time. Although Pathan's batting has developed well, it is unlikely that he has been included as a batsman, and his bowling has looked so out of sorts that he may have struggled to find a place as a pure bowler. Sehwag too, although looking more comfortable in the middle order, has not regained his natural fluency, largely because his reflexes have slowed. The return of Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble also bears out the "safety first" approach, though their selection has kept fitter and more athletic players out of the team.

But several of these problems, it can be argued, are the consequence of factors that are not in the management's control. The very fact that there are few surprises in the team indicates that there really aren't too many alternatives. This may be a failure of state systems, or something more fundamental. But that cannot be influenced by fiddling with team composition. It can be also said that these experimentations have been good, in their limited way. Ganguly and Kumble, for example, have been given time off to regain their intensity for the game and they have returned the better for it. One hopes the same is true of Sehwag. What's more, a lot of the tweaking has been not with the team composition but more with approach. The batting order in particular has become more flexible, with batsmen finding new roles by playing in different positions. There is also a better understanding on the players' part of their roles in the team, more security of position. In short, maybe the experiments have worked in perhaps unintended ways. Which line of argument wins the higher ground, of course, will be decided in a couple of months, when the World Cup ends. On present reckoning, it takes a large dose of patriotism to believe that this team can be expected to win.

Meanwhile, the selection raises the uncomfortable question of the role of patronage, and whether the teams should be left to the coach and captain to decide. It is of course true that all countries have selection panels, with some personal biases inherent in them. But in India the degree of play given to extraneous considerations is such as to raise basic questions about how a team should be chosen.