Opinion Spin out of control?
Ashwins choice is a luxury the team may not be able to afford.
The Indian team for the cricket World Cup was announced on Monday afternoon,after what is believed to be an intense session of teleconferencing between Chennai and Cape Town,as chairman of selectors Krishnamachari Srikkanth and skipper M.S. Dhoni tested their reasoning skills against each other. There are just two contentious choices in the 15-member squad �� Piyush Chawla and R. Ashwin.
Its an open secret that Chawla is Dhonis pick (as was evident in the 2008 Commonwealth Bank Series and the current South Africa series),but the selectors choice of Ashwin is a luxury that the team may not be able to afford during a crunch World Cup match.
Three spinners are needless cushion for a team that derives its basic strength and balance from a plethora of spin-bowling all-rounders. Leg-spinner Chawla can provide variation to the attack if required,but Ashwin fails on that count too. In a playing XI,which has Harbhajan Singh,Virender Sehwag,Suresh Raina and Yusuf Pathan to bowl off-spin of various kinds flat,fastish,loopy or miserly and has even Yuvraj Singh with his left-arm spin,
Ashwin will have no scope to ply his special carom ball.
Statistics show something interesting. Ashwin has played just seven ODIs in his career,and only one under Dhoni. Then again,he played because there was no Harbhajan in the side. He was made to carry drinks even when there was no Harbhajan in two Sri Lanka series and in two matches against Australia when Dhoni was leading the side. Ashwin,clearly,isnt Dhonis first or second choice during international matches. When the captains pick for the World Cup happens to be a second spinner in Chawla,and he is the deciding authority in the final XI,selectors seem to have picked Ashwin just to take care of their bruised egos.
Clearly,this isnt the best foundation to bring back the trophy that Kapil Dev won 28 years ago and M. Azharuddin,Sourav
Ganguly and Rahul Dravid missed during their turns once in four years. Indias worries have been primarily injuries to Sachin Tendulkar,Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir the entire top-order who missed more matches than they played in the last season. Then again,Zaheer Khan,Ashish Nehra,Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel have also been susceptible to injuries during the same period.
S. Sreesanth and Rohit Sharma have a right to feel aggrieved in missing the bus in such a scenario. Indias two previous World Cup campaigns the ICC World Twenty20 in England in 2009 and in the West Indies in 2010 have both been derailed by injury problems to pacers and frontline batsmen. Logically,India need extra cushion when it comes to pace and batting departments; but what they have got is an extra spinner which they might never need.
India have just one back-up batsman in Virat Kohli and one back-up seam bowler in Munaf in the six slots that regularly occupy the final XI while Chawla and Ashwin both sit in waiting for Harbhajan to get injured. Theres no back-up for Dhoni. But since Indias fixtures are well spaced to get the ICC technical committees clearance and a flight,maybe such an eventuality could be ignored.
The selectors might get away with their choice because theres little scope of tweaking the XI in the six games that India will need to play before the quarter-finals begin. Like Dhoni said ahead of the one-day series in South Africa,every member of the XI knows his exact role ahead of the World Cup. Even the twelfth man is fixed,taking into account Virat Kohlis excellent fielding abilities. The rest need to just carry the towels and the water bottles. In every World Cup squad,theres one surprise element. It was Sunil Valson in 1983,Sanjay Bangar and Parthiv Patel in 2003,maybe it is Ashwin in 2011.
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