`Team management to have final say at home’

“The team management will have the final say after due consultations with the selectors,” Wadekar assured on behalf of the selection committee while dwelling upon the issue which has been a bone of contention.

Admitting that “it’s not fair on the team management” to be entrusted with the eleven by the selectors, Wadekar disclosed that he didn’t face any such problem during his stint as cricket manager with the Indian team.

The immediate task aheadof the selection panel, he said, is to focus on the World Cup. “We have to formulate our policies keeping the World Cup in mind. The earlier (selection) committee had done a good job of providing us a nucleus of 30-odd players. We now have to condense it a bit so that it becomes easier to concentrate on, especially for Bobby Simpson,” he explained.

The former Indian captain, who was on the panel that selected the two teams to Commonwealth Games and Sahara Cup, projected the positive side of the controversial issue, saying: “We were able to expose the youngsters to the parameters of international cricket which include temperament, pressure etc.”

Terming the recent failures of the Indian team as “just an aberration,” he remarked that he was a firm believer in the law of averages. “It is a good thing that they have come to realise the importance of playing together,” he added.

The selection committee chairman even had words of solace for Rahul Dravid, who he felt was experiencing a “bad patch.“If he is given a little bit of confidence, he will be ideally suited in the middle-order,” he said. But would that mean persisting with the Karnataka middle-order batsman until then. Wadekar replied in the affirmative.