Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the Indian team’s think tank in Australia has made some strange selections in this season’s Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.

First was to blood young leg-spinner Karn Sharma in the opening Test at Adelaide instead of playing premier off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. Sharma ended up with four wickets in the match, but three of those were batsmen who had centuries to their names. Expectedly, Sharma was dropped for the next Test at Brisbane. Equally baffling was the omission of Umesh Yadav for the opener because not only is he a sharp pace bowler, he also has experience of the 2011-12 Australia tour.