A series that was lost inside the selection committee meeting room!

The recently concluded Test Series against Srilanka has once again seriously opened up the never ending debate of our persistent selection blunders, which has yet again resulted in a demoralizing series loss for a team that claims to be one of the most talented sides in the world.

True, we do have the talent, and now the desire too (at least in a few of our players), but over and over again we are done in by our brainless and unimaginative selection policy which, for this tour, had given us a team that contained the “Fabulous Four” selected purely on their names, a captain-cum-bowler, captain only because he has served Indian cricket long enough, and a bowler (read player) only because he is the captain. As if that was not enough, we had two wicket keepers, who were called so, only because they stood behind the wicket, catching and stumping be damned, batting they did, the way they felt like.

That takes away six spots in a game which unfortunately (for us) allows only eleven a side. To win a test series only with the rest five players (two batsmen and three bowlers) against an international side was always going to be a bit too far fetched. Srilanka had to be the favorite right from the word go.

The end result all but confirmed it. We did manage to pull one game back though, riding on the individual brilliance of Sehwag, but take that apart and we got what we deserved.

Let’s take a look at the batting performances of these big guns for this particular series. (Click on Tourstatistics to view the individual performances-courtesy cricinfo)

What is quite evident here is, any player however glorious his past records may be, can't figure in any side whatsoever (leave alone an international test side) with such form. With the combined batting average of 24.09 in all the six innings in the series, Sachin (15.83), Ganguly(16.00), Dravid (24.66) and Laxman(43.00) were hardly going to contribute anything towards winning.

And sadly that was not all. They have managed to keep a talented batsman like Rohit Sharma out in the bench, who is touted to be the future of Indian batting!

If you also consider the wicket-keeper's batting performance, then the combined average comes down to 20.83(hypothetically in every single innings the score would read as 21 for the loss of 5 wickets) with six players to follow, out of which four were pure bowlers. Can any team recover from such a dismal situation to even salvage a draw, leave alone winning?

What is annoying is, such selection has happened right after a season which had seen us reaping rich dividends by investing in young and hungry cricketers, who were raring to go out there and prove their worth.

In contrast, our oldies have nothing to prove as they have often been found confessing in front of camera, and no desire to put a team’s interest ahead of their own as has been evident for quite some time now. Their sole aim has been to hold on to their respective positions in the test side, which is their last hope with their selection in one-dayers and T20 being long vanished into thin air.

Can’t really blame them for being greedy, but our selection committee must have some commonsense. None of these players, despite of their towering statistics in terms of centuries and volume of runs scored in both the versions of the game, have ever been as valuable to India, as Steve Waugh was to Australia, when he was shown the door after a few lacklustre performances, despite of being one of their most successful captains and a batsman of immense value. What was their threshold for being in the side was performance and performance alone. That’s precisely why; they still continued to reign as the number one side in the world despite of dropping big names in favor of better performers at any particular point of time. If Australia could drop Steve Waugh, why do we have to carry a Ganguly and a Dravid in our team just because of their reputation? How many more series do we have to lose just to satiate these senior players’ ego? How many more young players do we ignore, in favor of this so called experience, that doesn't any more translate into performance?

It is not just this series, if you check the record books, these very player have managed to hang in there for quite some time now with a fifty here and a fourty there, purely because they have a certain number of runs and centuries under their belt, which they had scored before ages! Going by that logic, what sin has Sunil Gavaskar committed? Why is he sitting there in the commentary box when we are struggling to find a compact opener? He does have the record to feature in this test side! Why not select him?

Let's come to the leadership issue. I had expressed my disappointment in a post titled Spare us spare Indian cricket, when Kumble was chosen to lead the side ahead of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, citing his seniority and long service to Indian cricket. He, with the kind of personality that he had both on and off the field, was never going to be able to inspire any body. Rather the effect was always going to be damaging. By the end of this series, I guess I have gotton my point across.

Kumble, on a consistent basis has favored older guys to younger ones, as in any other event he himself would have been the first to face the axe. His decision on the batting order has been nothing less than disastrous. He had no business sending Ganguly ahead of Laxman innings after innings after repeatedly witnessing Laxman being stranded with the tail-enders especially when Ganguly had shown absolutely no desire to fight it out there in the middle. To expect Kumble to pick Rohit Sharma ahead of at least one of those big fours despite of their repeated failure, would have been nothing more than a day dream, simply because favoring a younger guy would obviously draw attention on himself.

He has always tried to steal the limelight from the success of others just to make sure that he gets the visibility as a great leader that in turn would ensure him a longer run at the helm. For example, right after the Australia series he had issued a statement, "We shouldn't get carried away by our incredible performances in the one-day and test matches in Australia...." Now, where was that incredible performance in tests? We had managed to draw the series. Even Sourav Ganguly's team had achieved the same feat in the previous tour.

More recently, after winning the second test against Srilanka, he said," I must say that this team has resilience. Coming back from a defeat and winning this test shows that this team has that fighting quality in it." This statement was supposed to be issued by Dhoni, for the one day side that he leads. This particlular test we had won just riding on Sehwags shoulders, with the fabulous four maintaining their consistency of poor scores. Sehwag, of course was ably supported by Gambhir, Ishant and Harbhajan. This hardly was the whole team. Had it been so, the seniors, who were very much a part of it, should have stood up and got counted. They should have taken the responsibility of saving the final test, when Sehwag departed early.

We must realise that we can't win test matches with a sub-standard team, lead by a sub-standard leader, who can't even figure in the eleven on the strength of his own performance. ( True, with eight wickets in five innings on tracks that were tailor-made for spinners, where Murali, Mendis and occasionally even Harbhajan played havoc, he can hardly inspire a bunch of players who are well past their prime) We are left with only one choice, we have to throw the youngsters to the deep end of the ocean yet again as we did for the T20 World Cup and the Downunder one-day series.

We have already seen the results. What on earth is stopping us?