Thoughtful Selection OR Board Politics ??

The comments made in this article are purely of individual nature & any similarity to any other content published anywhere is purely coincidental.

23rd February,06 was just another Thursday for most of us except for Saurav Ganguly as the team for the Ist Test match against England to be played from March 1 at Nagpur was to be announced on that day, as soon as the Indian Team came back from Pakistan early this week,the point of discussion that has been doing the rounds for the last 6-8 months , again took centre stage,that of whether Saurav would make it to the Final 15 or not for the 1st test.Finally,when the news channels flashed the news on Thursday evening that 'Dada' had been dropped from the squad for the 1st test, it was again time for the cricket experts & for the cricket fans on the road to debate whether this is a consequence of only poor batting form of the stylish southpaw who is still hailed as one of the best captains in Indian cricket history or is there more that meets the eye....???

Personally, as a cricket fan i was surprised at the decision of the selectors but what really hit me harder is the treatment that has been veted towards a man who would not be rated as the best in terms of his cricketing techniques ( read 15000+ runs at the highest level) but more for his attitude & other ingredients in his behavior that stood out amongst the rest & possibly for the first time we had a captain, in whom, we all saw the "Aussie Attitude" of do or die. But again, any person cannot be offered privileges based on his past laurels for too long & this is more true in sports where the audience memory is short, even the diehard Saurav Ganguly fan cant deny that his form was far from satisfactory in the last 2 years which is again a long time period to be out of top form. The only case that i would like to build up in favour of Saurav is that if form is the primary criterion for getting selected in the team,then his last two test innings of 34 & 37 should be decent enough to get him thru atleast for the 1st test though these scores were not those big ones that would have surely helped his cause ( Sehwag & Dravid missed out in both the innings of the same test ).

'Bygones are Bygones' is easy to say to others when they are passing thru a bad phase & that is what many sports journalists & ex cricketers are advicing 'Dada' that he should not quit the game at this stage but at the end of the day Saurav should be given the freedom to decide about his cricketing future which seems to be in the middle of nowhere right now. What appears to me is that the selection commitee members were keeping their fingers crossed hoping that Ganguly would fail in the Karachi test which would make their jobs easier & to some extent their prayers were heard by the Aussie gods,i guess, because that would help Greg Chappel to reinforce his decision of keeping Ganguly out of the team for reasons relating to both on & off the field.

Ganguly who was once called "The God of the Off side" seems to be getting no support from either God or from the Off side that can pull him back in to the Indian Team but as a follower of Indian cricket & of the BCCI gimmicks for quite sometime now , i am sure that the moment India lose couple of important matches or series, the selectors would suddenly realise the importance of Ganguly's experience in the side & we could find him in the cricket field smelling & hunting the leather once again.