Team India and its Vagaries of Selection - By Keshkan

Now let's move on to selections of team India and my personal take on it.

During the recently concluded world cup, the amount of criticism of the selection process was nuclear and rightfully so, whether it was the NO.4 debate or batting position of certain players. I just didn't understand why in the semis, MSD comes in at No.7 when at his age, he is more of an anchor than a finisher unlike Pant or Pandya. Ironically, Pant had been sent at No.5 (remember that he was not even in the original squad) when you get the feeling that he is the one who should be finishing matches for us. His strength is aggressive shot making while his ability to the anchor innings. Even you could do better. The score was 15-3 when Pant had been coming in and you would expect a Dhoni to stabilise the innings. So how come can you expect an ageing Dhoni to finish off matches in such high pressure situations coming in at NO.7.This ultimately cost India the world cup. 

Let's move on to KL Rahul. Look, he should have been dropped after the West Indies series last year itself in October 2018 with his dwindling form and major technical issues. Instead they stuck with him till the West Indies series early this month when players like Gill, Panchal, Easwaran and Gaikwad had made plenty of runs on the domestic and India A circuit. Suddenly, they move on to Rohit Sharma who is considered the next Sehwag. Whether he is or not is another debate. But my question is, why wasn't he asked to open in first place and why all of a sudden when all these domestic players are making merry (who are hard done by), he is going to make his opening debut this October. Well, I would like him to get at least all 5 test matches at home against South Africa and Bangladesh before the team goes to New Zealand early next year. Please India… don't drop him after a single failure. 

Now, let’s move on to the so called "VISON 2020"(Abdul Kalam reference unintentional) where lots of experiments are made on the T20 squad for the next T20 World Cup. Kuldeep, Chahal, Bumrah, Bhuvi - all the main bowlers, were rested in the recently concluded T20 series against South Africa. Instead India had tried out Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Washington Sundar with Rahul Chahar and Khaleel Ahmed on the bench. All of them had varying degrees of performances but I just want to know if most of them would be playing next world cup? Maybe next series, the "main" bowlers will be back and these people get dropped… So much for a players' growth and confidence. 

Its high time Virat Kohli recognizes that there should be some degree of balance, continuity, stability if you are making a vision. Recognize a small pool of players and make them play all T20's together so that they could learn from mistakes or losing matches building camaraderie along the way. It won't matter as once the world cup starts, India will have a fairly settled squad with a core group of players ready to win it. 

This has been the formula of Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians in IPL who are the 2 most successful teams in IPL. That’s why Gambhir rightly said Kohli isn't the best of captains in IPL. Nor is he in my opinion in the limited overs format. I bet Rohit Sharma will do a way better job than he does and that is probably the reason why the so called "rift" between those two had happened. That might be an exaggeration but pretty sure there were disagreements 

If you want me to explain why Kohli isn't the greatest of captains when it comes to limited overs, I can write an entire article for you. I consider him the best when it comes to test cricket though 

Let's hope that the team management improves its strategy going forward. We have all the resources but we need to know how to use it.