For the most lucid understanding of the thought behind selecting Indian teams in recent times you need look no further than Greg Chappell’s impressive soliloquy on rediff.com. For all of us, passionate, impatient, critical, indulgent followers of Indian cricket, it offers a wonderful insight into decisions we spend hours agonising over. Chappell is articulate and so, the best spokesman for his views, like Chidambaram and Shahrukh Khan tend to be as well. There is a feeling of reassurance on reading it. First, the awareness that Chappell is not a whip-cracking ringmaster but one voice in a chorus because clearly Dravid and Vengsarkar have as much to do with this team as Chappell does. But more important, because you come away with the feeling that the thinking is right. That is half the process of winning; the other is converting that thought into action for the two go together as Tagore told us in his immortal prayer. It is interesting to see the qualities that Chappell and Dravid identified as those a winning team would need. Good fielding, flexibility and depth in batting and bowling, mental creativity and mental manoeuvrability. It would seem India have the crucial elements of depth in batting and bowling but the rest is debatable. Certainly the fielding is a worry since India catch well but don’t seem athletic enough and as a result, the creativity a team needs in the field will be lost. The last two, I suspect, have more to do with the attitude of individuals and we can at best guess there. In the absence of knowledge nobody should go further. I believe there are two other factors that will determine how far India go in this tournament; momentum and self-belief. In a painfully long tournament like this, teams need to stay in contention till about early April (if that gives the impression this is a voyage, it is intended!) and get on a winning streak from there on. Peaking early will be an issue because it may not be easy to maintain momentum for so long. Teams will need to be creative in their choice of players so that when it counts the most, the best eleven are available and in form. And for whatever you and I might think, it is the belief deep down inside, in the gut of each player that will eventually determine whether they go through or fall away. We will be able to sense that in the approach, not necessarily in press conferences where things are said because they must be rather than because they are indeed true. On the basis of one match, it is too early to make a judgement on the kind of wickets the West Indies will throw up but if indeed they are like the one in Trelawny, India will not mind it too much. On slowish pitches, totals tend to be around 250 which, I suspect, will diminish somewhat the importance of fielding. While you still need to save runs, batting and bowling will tend to become more critical and India will like to play in that kind of environment. It will suit India’s bowling, even allow the Tendulkars and Sehwags to chip in. And India’s batting manoeuvrability, which is an undoubted strength, will become a stronger factor. Teams like South Africa and Australia will prefer surfaces that are harder, that do a lot more because their bowling works best in those conditions. Neither has a world class slow bowler and Australia, in particular, seem to be handicapped by the apparent decline of Brad Hogg, a much under-rated bowler. It will also allow Sri Lanka and, to some extent, New Zealand to become stronger. That leaves the two most enigmatic teams of this tournament; England and Pakistan. If England get on a roll, they have the top six to take them the distance but those batsmen have two roles to play. First score enough runs to make up for their relatively weaker bowling and ensure that they bat long enough to minimise expectations from the lower order. Ideally England would have liked a wicket- keeper good enough to bat in the top seven because with the presence of Flintoff and Collingwood that would have given them the flexibility everyone needs. Now, the inexperienced Dalrymple becomes a key player. Which leaves Pakistan. I just have this feeling that their success, or otherwise, will lie in whether they are thinking of what have, or what they haven’t!
