Selectors once again sent out a potent message when they left out some senior players.
Seldom has team selection for a domestic cricket match sent such potent messages as those conveyed by the Rest of India squad to play the Irani trophy. The team will take on the Ranji Trophy champion in a match that provides the only proper warm-up before the Australia series. The RoI line-up for this match reveals who is part of the national selectors’ scheme of things for the ensuing Test matches.
Clearly, Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh are not.
The decision to leave out Sourav is harsh. In the two years since he returned to the team in South Africa, he has batted better than he did as a younger man, averaging 45.05 over 21 Tests. Rahul Dravid scored at 33.25 in the same period. Every time Sourav went out to bat, he looked good for many more than he ended up scoring.
Before the terrible tour to Sri Lanka, he looked the most comfortable and fluent of all Indian batsmen on pitches in South Africa, England and Australia — three countries that provide playing conditions very different from those in the subcontinent. Not that he was awkward at home. His 87 on a dreadful Kanpur pitch won the match.
The decision to leave out Yuvraj appears to have an air of inevitability. It seems he is running out of chances to cement his place in the Test side. Yuvraj provides a sharp contrast with two players who are similar to him in many ways — Sehwag and Dhoni — but have shown a malleable temperament and an unbending resolve to add new dimensions to their game and march ahead of Yuvraj.
Yuvraj, on the other hand, seems the most comfortable in Twenty20, where he can unleash his instinct to have a go at every ball. He remains one of the most potent batsmen in Fifty50, too, though his recent outings have not been very successful. In Tests, he looks confused, not quite sure what to do with the ball, only to find his legs often locked in a half-cocked position and the ball taking the edge of his bat.
The third message from the RoI selection, as potent as the first two, is that it promises to resurrect Mohammad Kaif. Kaif was Yuvraj’s captain when India won the Under-19 World Cup in 2000. He made his Test debut that year and Yuvraj played his first ODI. Since then the selectors always seemed more patient with Yuvraj, while Kaif appeared to be playing to save his place every time. He was often dropped after good performances. Now, if the selectors are running out of patience with Yuvraj, perhaps they will reallocate some of it to Kaif.
