The flux exists, but Sehwag is a strong statement

The dropping of Sehwag is the strongest statement yet and it is a good one. Like all great performers, Sehwag seemed to enjoy the moment, the next one seemed irrelevant, the result just a necessary footnote. He was like a pure writer who craves neither the adulation nor the pay cheque, but delights in the sheer placement of words. Then somewhere on the journey, the deadline becomes critical, the writer counts words, becomes a wordsmith, the end consumes the process. Sehwag seems trapped in the cricketer’s version of writer’s block and this break will, or at any rate, should do him good.

The problem though is that there is no other cricket for him to play and the selectors therefore have little but his word or his record or his undoubted potential to go by.

They can only hope that this bitter pill will work. So too with Irfan Pathan who is having a very good match against Tamil Nadu, getting wickets with the new ball and the old. But is one good match enough? At what point does he merit a place and is there then enough time to take a decision on him for the World Cup. Again, I suspect the selectors will have to go with intuition over evidence.

At some point Yuvraj Singh will have to be looked at. He will get no more than a couple of games to prove his state of readiness and with the announcement that Anil Kumble will definitely feature in the next selection, you wonder how much Ramesh Powar has to play with. What will interest me greatly is the selectors’ reaction if Sharma, Uthappa and Powar have one good game. How do they then fit them into the remaining one-day games given that Yuvraj, Pathan, Sehwag and Kumble will have to be looked at? And somewhere in the mix lie Kaif and Mongia. It gets more and more difficult!

There is a reason I believe the team picked for the first two games is an experiment rather than a close enough solution. The selectors have picked eight batsmen, including the two wicket keepers. Now, do six of them play or seven? For the right balance you would like seven batsmen but then, nobody in this list can guarantee ten overs, either singly or as a pair. On his day, Tendulkar might and Ganguly might lend a hand. On another they might manage five between them at best. In a balanced team you must have at least six serious bowling options.

So let us assume that only six of the batsmen play and five bowlers make up the eleven. That means one of the bowlers has to bat at number seven. That could only be Powar or Sharma and presumably that is why Sharma, in particular has been picked.

I was a bit disheartened therefore to see the scorecard of the Delhi v Haryana game that just ended for one Joginder Sharma batted at number eight where indeed, he seems to have batted for a major part of the season. Surely, if he has to bat at number seven for India, he should be good enough to bat at five or six, at the very latest, for a weak state side. That means India’s first choice lower half will have to be Powar, Sharma, Harbhajan, Zaheer and Sreesanth. Numbers 9, 10 nd 11 seem good enough but it would have to be a brave selector who picks five batsmen, a wicket keeper and those last five for a big game.

Who then will the first five be? Assuming that India want to give themselves the opportunity of playing Tendulkar into form, that Ganguly needs to play and that Dravid must play, it means picking two out of Gambhir, Uthappa, Raina and Kaarthick, each of whom you want to see more of. For any reasonable conclusion to be reached, this set needs to be persevered for four games, the only problem being that the World Cup team will have to be finalised with just two games against Sri Lanka.

In an ideal situation, the World Cup combination would have been announced by now allowing the players eight games to get the permutation right. Instead, India are in a bit of a mess, even having to appoint, as vice-captain, someone who was captain ten years ago. Vice-captain by elimination? Oh dear!