By Javagal Srinath
SHILLONG:There weren’t any major surprises when India’s selectors announced the 15-man squad that will try to successfully defend the World Cup won at home in 2011. When it comes to the selection of a team for a tournament such as the World Cup, it is only two or three positions at the most that are up for discussion and debate. The majority of the squad picks itself automatically.
It is the current form of the team that usually decides those final two or three slots. I am sure the whole of India will be talking about the exclusion from the squad of M Vijay, who has been in great form both on this tour of Australia and in England before that. I am not sure if the selectors have moved away from the concept of rewarding good performances in one format of the game with a place in another format being played in the same country.
The essence of winning the World Cup revolves around playing with great fluency on Australian pitches, and Vijay has been nothing if not fluent all through the Test series. That confidence would have worked wonders for Vijay and would have rubbed off on the rest of the team, so his non-inclusion comes with a question mark but having said that, India’s batting is well set with the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane and Suresh Raina, not to mention MS Dhoni himself. This is amply reflective of the strength at the top of the Indian batting order, so perhaps the selectors might have felt that keeping Vijay in the squad was a bit of a luxury they could not afford. With Ravindra Jadeja coming down the order and R Ashwin and Bhuvneshwar Kumar more than competent, the Indian batting looks the strongest of all the teams in the World Cup. That said, batting hasn’t been India’s problem in limited-overs cricket. India must sort out their bowling combinations and resources at the earliest. The need someone to lead the attack, they need to zero in on the bowlers who Dhoni and the team management believe will play in all the matches in the World Cup. At this point, Bhuvneshwar Kumar seems the best bet to do that, unless Ishant Sharma finds his line and length and leads from the front. India’s bowling form will be thoroughly tested during the tri-series preceding the World Cup. Midway through that tri-series, Dhoni should have decided what his first choice bowling attack will be for the duration of the World Cup. There will some experimentation early on, but by the time the tri-series is over, India should have their best eleven in place, the team they believe will take them all the way to the title. Among the spinners, Ashwin is an automatic choice, the balance of the team will decide if they will play a second spinner or an additional medium pacer.
Which brings us to the all-rounders. This is a great opportunity for Stuart Binny to establish himself as an integral, important member of the Indian team. These will be somewhat alien conditions for Binny – hard bouncy pitches in a country where he hasn’t played before. He has to fight his way into the eleven and then cement his place, which the tri-series will allow him to do if he gets to play regularly. If he doesn’t figure in the tri-series, it is difficult to see him being an important member of the World Cup eleven. In the last couple of days leading up to the team selection, much of the interest has centred around Yuvraj Singh, the Player of the Tournament when India won the title in 2011. Yuvraj will be very disappointed and I am sure there will be a lot of sympathy for him in India, especially after he made three Ranji trophy hundreds on the trot, but it would have been a bolt from the blue if he had been named in the 15. To me, the writing was very clear when he wasn’t picked in the long list of 30 probables, and given that he hasn’t played a one-day international since December 2013. Is this 15 the winning combination, the team that is best suited to take India to a second successive World Cup crown? I am not sure how to answer that question. At the end of the day, it is all about how they play on a given day, how they turn up day after day during the length of the tournament, what kind of synergy they bring with them. Those will be the crucial elements in deciding how far this side, any side, will go in the World Cup.