The non-inclusion of Mumbaikar Sarfaraz Khan for West Indies Tests has entered into the spirit of national debate over the past few days
Sarfaraz Khan (Pic: AFP)
Unlike football managers, India's cricket selectors don't have to stand on the touchline and absorb all that the crowd thinks of them. Perhaps if they did, you wouldn't be surprised to hear chants of ‘You don't know what you're doing’ cascading down from the stands at a stadium.
You need not spend long wandering about freely and often far afield around the country to know that nearly every Indian fan thinks he or she would do a better job of selecting squads than those presently tasked with doing it. It is a role that looks easy from the outside — preoccupied often, debating which quicks should go to England and which spinners merit a shot in West Indies. But what’s it really like to make, shape and break careers?
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Selectors are a bit like wicketkeepers. We only really notice them when they make terrible mistakes. Often so distant from the fray, they do not usually receive plaudits, only brickbats. The lineage of these men and the long-range impacts of their decisions are not often considered in totality, but the concept of the selector as a 'hate figure' has existed since forever. But there lies a great satisfaction in it too. “You never quite know how a player is going to react when they’re put in front of 25,000 people and they’re at the centre of the country’s sporting attention for a week. But when you see someone go out there and look the part, you think ‘well done the player’, but also, ‘give yourself a pat on the back for seeing something in the player and making the decision’,” said a wise man once.
Players like Sachin Tendulkar or Mahendra Singh Dhoni or Virat Kohli were first picked to play for the state and later for the country purely based on instinct. Who could have predicted then that each one of them would end up as a batting legend when they made it to the India squad at first? There could easily have been others at the time that they were picked, who would have had better credentials, perhaps statistics-wise.
If Cheteshwar Pujara faced the axe for his dreary liaison with the willow, does inclusion of young guns Yashasvi Jaiswal and Ruturaj Gaikwad guarantee India middle-order success? Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar came down heavily on the selection panel, even going to an extent of labelling India’s Test specialist as the ‘scapegoat’.
“He has been a loyal servant of Indian cricket, a quiet and able achiever. But because he doesn’t have millions of followers on whatever platforms who would make a noise in case he gets dropped, you drop him? That is something beyond understanding,” questioned Gavaskar.
For instance, Virat Kohli has 932 runs to his name at an average of only 32.13, thanks to his blistering knock of 186 against Australia in the Ahmedabad Test which ended in a draw. Pujara, meanwhile, scored 927 runs at an average of 31.96 and had one hundred to his name against Bangladesh in a winning cause. Rohit Sharma, on the other hand, played lesser innings than the two during the same period, having scored 758 runs at an average of 42.11. Clearly, Rohit-Kohli were given the go-ahead.
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If Pujara’s contributions of 14 and 27 at the Oval were made to look like extravagant riches by the supine stumbles of India's top and middle-order against Australia’s formidable XI, then it should not detract from the fact that the 35-year-old has long since ceased to merit his place as a 100-Test veteran. If this wasn’t enough, the non-inclusion of Mumbaikar Sarfaraz Khan has entered into the spirit of national debate over the past few days. This is not about whether the prolific run-scorer deserved to be picked ahead of the likes of Gaikwad or Jaiswal, it is about the sheer idiocy of acting ignorant time and again.
If the aim was to break with the past and look to the future, why can’t they now afford to swing the other extreme and part ways with underperformers? Did Sarfaraz deserve to be left by the wayside? Once more, the power of prayer and hope takes precedence over rational thought and logic in Indian cricket. You will know why.
The two-time former India U-19 World Cup player has amassed 2,566 runs in the last three Ranji seasons, with an impressive career average of 79.65 after 37 red-ball games to fall back on. Gaikwad, whose career average is nothing beyond 42-plus, is nowhere close. But he gets the nod ahead of Sarfaraz, what will the selectors now say? That his remarkable Ranji career counted for nothing when stacked up against his intermittent success in the IPL?
Selection isn't about ego or arranging farewells for great players. It should only be about picking the best XI to win a game. By going into the Caribbean Islands with more or less the same XI that were thrashed at the Oval, India are only wishing away a problem that was glaringly evident to anyone that watched the WTC Final without their heads buried in the sand.
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