India's Selection Conundrum

Last year when India played T20 World cup in Australia, i was baffled by the batting line up that Dravid and Rohit sharma had put on the field. There are enough stats to suggest that a line up that has stronger opening pair has higher chances of winning the matches. The approach that Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul took in those initial powerplay overs was to assess the conditions and then hit the ramp and then take off. If i have to put them in software terminology they took an age old methodology - Waterfall, which Project Manager hate to even talk about it even though they might be executing projects in the same way. 

Many of my friends believed in this approach of : watch, wait and hit whilst i was of the strong opinion that T20 format isnt suited for it. You got to send out your best men upfront to ensure you are not losing out on the Powerplay advantage. In such scenario, by virtue of their approach Rohit + KL opening pair, dare i say was the worst opening pair among the big teams in World Cup. 

Moreover, considering the kind of innings that SKY had played before the World cup, it made more sense that he opened the batting along with someone who can match his skill. There was none other than Rishab Pant who could do that. For some reason Dravid & Co just did not play him at all for the initial matches. They kept him on the bench and team ended up playing Hooda, who played as important a role as Sadhu Kokila in significantly insignificant Kannada movies. You could argue that Pant failed when they gave him an opportunity for few matches, but the sample set was too low to not give him an extended chance. Its always an asset to have a player who takes away all the complex variables of the game - pitch, overcast conditions and so on. They just raise the game purely based on their skills. The fact that Pant was not given an opportunity to start with was a baffling decision making by Dravid & co i would never forget. 

Come June 2023, when all the players have regrouped after playing the mini Diwali of Cricket - IPL in England, a similar selection decision conundrum popped up, to decide which spinner would make a cut to final 11. To everyone's surprise Team ended up picking Jadeja instead of Ashwin. Given that Ashwin has had a lot of success against the Australia in the recent past, specifically creating a lot of troubles for the left handers, it would have made sense for Ashwin to make it to the team. The only rationale that i can think of selecting Jadeja would have been that he provides much better balance to the middle order as a batting allrounder, considering Rahane's terrible performance in the recent past. Even if that was the case, i would have still played Ashwin simply because of the tools that he has up his sleeve that takes out conditions out of the equation - the drift that he gets for left handers and number of variations that he has. 

Does that mean both Ashwin and Jadeja should have played? Yes, of course. It would have given a better balance in the middle order and we would have a solid spin attack who has played with Aussies psyche more than their skills in recent times. Then who should have kept out? I would have sat out Umesh Yadav, simply because his bowling is not best suited for English conditions. He is at his best on Australian tracks that provides him extra bounce and pace and not seaming conditions. He has also had a history of leaking too many runs, which This is regardless of whether or not Umesh  picks a fiver in the 2nd innings. But you see, Rohit and Dravid are currently working like DK Shivakumar and Siddaramiah where the focus is giving the freebies rather than breaking the norms and looking at brave ideas. 

This combo has simply not delivered so far. I am not even considering the matches against Australia because their team just weren't ready for spin tracks that were thrown at them. 

Unless someone starts questioning the decision making of Rohit and Dravid, the selection conundrum would continue to haunt until the World Cup this year. And when that happens we may start thinking on bringing down all the nice photo frames of Dravid that we have built so far on the walls.