Selection Blues

It was a refreshing change to see Dilip Vengsarkar and his colleagues in the BCCI selection committee field media inquiries about the selections somewhat transparently (from what I gather from the Cricinfo article). Vengsarkar certainly did have a few headaches following India's Champions Trophy debacle, but did not think it necessary to change too much. A couple of old campaigners are back, and their experience may help the team, but one can only be cautiously optimistic about Zaheer Khan's return. What of Anil Kumble? Well, wait and see, I guess. But I think the selectors did well to recognise the lack of potency in the attack and even if Kumble doesn't take too many wickets, it is unlikely he will leak runs by the buckets. One thing that Vengsarkar said got my attention. Articulating the reasons behind Wasim Jaffer's selection, he said that a good test player will make a good one-day player. A few red bulbs went off in my head when I read that. Where has Vengsarkar been all these days? If he has been watching both forms of the game (give Twenty20 only emerged recently), he should know there have been specialists in both forms of the game who haven't really graduated to a good enough level in the other form. Certainly there are those like Dravid, but even someone as good and attacking as Justin Langer does not find a place in the Australian team (Hayden is still good enough, IMO). We've had our share of Sanjay Manjrekars and SS Das-es. I hope the selection committee is smart enough to recognise that there are indeed specialists in this era. But the real reason they were forced to look to Jaffer may be that our bench strength is not exactly great. Gautam Gambhir has the talent, but he made it easy for the selectors to overlook him. Suresh Raina and Dinesh Mongia both stay in, and as I mentioned in my last post, I'm totally lost in Dinesh Mongia's case. Looks like we have to deal with the spectre of Mongia's insipid batsmanship come World Cup time. While that may be difficult to bear, I'm certainly in a better position to deal with it than VVS Laxman. On to South Africa, then. Any bets on who'll bat at number three? - NK