Poor Rohit and a few others...

Of all the people, I feel most sorry for Wriddhiman Saha today. Poor guy, he is already facing a barrage of criticism for being picked ahead of Karthik and Parthiv as a back up for Dhoni. And of all possible eventualities, he makes his debut as a specialist batsman today. If he doesn’t go on to have a good test career, he would be one of the curious cases featured to death in every sports/cricket related quiz shows. Something along the lines of “Name the guy, who was a wicketkeeper for his state team with a batting average of 35 odd, but made his test debut for India as a specialist batsman” and also “explain why?”.

Now coming to the main script - Could it get any worse for Rohit? From being billed (rightfully) as the inheritor of no.4 slot, to not even finding a spot in the initial squad despite injuries to 2 middle order batsmen, life had come a near full circle for Rohit. Before he could fully complete the circle, he got the call of his life as a back up for the susceptible Laxman despite an indifferent domestic season. And oh good god, what happens next? Gets injured 15 minutes before the start of play! I was so looking forward to hearing the news of Laxman’s unavailability so that Rohit would play today. Sachin and Rohit batting together - Wow, I was licking my lips in anticipation of a feast. I felt terrible when I heard Dhoni mention that Rohit is not in the XI at the toss. If I felt as bad as I did, can’t imagine what emotional turbulence he must have gone through. Would he get another chance to debut anytime soon? What if Badri seals the chance? He would further slide down in the pegging order. But for a man oozing with so much talent and class, it should just be a small stumbling block. My money is on him inheriting the no.4 slot when Sachin eventually retires.

With so much happening on the morning of the test, Rohit must not be the only guy cursing his luck. Manish Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and who not? If any of them had been in Nagpur, they would have been assured of a test debut. And that - when there has been no vacancy in the middle order for so long and doesn’t appear any will be there in the near future either - was an opportunity too good to miss for these promising youngsters. Maybe Cheeka could have made a secret call to Mr. Mallya, asking him to arrange a private jet to flow in Manish to Nagpur. In the meanwhile Dhoni could have fielded a substitute or prayed that the top order holds up till then – what say?

Now coming to the torrent of tweets that I saw in the morning about the stupidity (and all other synonyms) of our selectors for not picking extra batsmen in the squad. I, along with a majority of our mainstream cricket journalists in the country have cried hoarse against the policy of picking 14 players (this time they picked 15 outside of Rohit Sharma) for a home test. We argued that was too much of a luxury and that the reserve players are better off playing domestic cricket than warming up the bench. Australia picks just 12 for any home test we said. Now today we flip around and say that the selectors should have picked more. That’s the kind of consistency (in logic that is) that would make Mohd. Ashraful proud.

Its fair to argue that the selectors picked a 15 member squad for this series anyway, so they could have planned better and picked the squad accordingly. But think about this - in the last few years, how many times have we had a change in the batting order? Compare that with the number of changes we have had in our bowling combinations – that answers why fewer batting back ups were picked. In a squad of 15, one slot went to the reserve WK because of MSD’s persistent back trouble. Of the remaining 14, 3 extra bowlers were selected to give Dhoni the flexibility to choose either 3 seamers & a spinner or 2 seamers & 2 spinners with an extra back up for both seam and spin option. This might appear to be a luxury but since we had a settled batting line up and the selectors were having the conviction of playing Badri and Vijay in the XI, batting reserves were done away with. Sensibly Rohit was later added to the squad as cover for Laxman. Lets not forget that Laxman was in the XV because he had a realistic chance of being fit for the match unlike Dravid and Yuvraj. So for the sixth batsman’s slot, it was either a fit Laxman or Rohit was the logic. But how on earth could we anticipate both of them being unfit to play on the morning of the test - it was just a highly improbable event ( a “black swan” if we could call it one). This bout of criticism against the selectors seems to be more of a hindsight bias – I can’t remember anyone being seriously critical of the balance of the team before the series started.

Now let’s talk about the handling of the black swan event. As unfortunate as it was, Rohit’s last minute injury was the best premise for MSD to have gambled with a five bowler formula. The selection of Saha would have been a little more justified if Dhoni had played as a specialist batsman and Saha as the keeper. But that was not the case. Dhoni will not get a better chance than this to test the 5 bowlers combination. Surely a genuine bowler would have been more valuable than playing a specialist WK as a batsman whose domestic batting record is not much to boast about. I guess MSD has programmed the idea of a team as 6 batsman, himself and 4 bowlers so hard that he couldn’t change it when the opportunity presented itself. If he didn’t do it today, I cant imagine him playing 5 bowlers ever.

And what’s gotten into Yousuf Pathan? Oh boy, did he play a blinder today (it must have been a blinder - I didn’t see a single ball of the match!). I so regret choosing to watch India-SA live on TV, when I should have witnessed history being made in Uppal stadium, which is not too far from where I stay – its been a day of hindsight biases!