My India World Cup team

The World Cup team is about to be announced tomorrow, and conventional wisdom is that it is a more or less settled affair. Conventional wisdom would say the following:

1. Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Yuvraj and Dhoni select themselves as the core of the batting. For the remaining batting spots, leaving out Sehwag is unthinkable because of his reputation and ability to win games for India; and that the youngsters Karthik and Uthappa have shown enough promise in their few chances that they would make up the last two batting spots.

2. That an all-rounder is essential to team balance, and given that Joginder Sharma failed to make good of the one chance he got, and no other all-round prospect got any chances at all, that spot has to go to Irfan Pathan, regardless of his form and confidence.

3. Now that Munaf Patel has shown full fitness, he will join the veterans Zaheer and Agarkar to make the core of the seam attack.

4. Kumble and Harbhajan are certain to be the two spinners in the squad; and

5. The last spot is between unequals – the talented but often wayward Sreesanth to back up the fast bowlers; the gutsy Ramesh Powar, who could provide an extra bowling all-rounder option; or young Suresh Raina, who has done absolutely nothing in the 40-odd chances he has received with the bat, but is a team management favorite because of his fielding. The biggest conventional wisdom, trumpeted from the start by Greg Chappell, is that the best fielding side will win the World Cup.

I agree with some of this CW, but disagree with other aspects. In response, I would say:

1. Yes, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Yuvraj and Dhoni do select themselves as the core of the batting. Yuvraj is the only question mark because of his rustiness, but he is such a match-winner when he works up rhythm that leaving him out is not in the equation. Leaving out Sehwag is also a hard call because of what he is capable of, but he has gone two years without a one-day hundred, and that is a long rope to give someone. Both Karthik and Uthappa have shown immense promise, but (as I will argue below) I think taking both of them along is a risk. Neither has a huge amount of experience, and in spite of the batting looking more or less settled, it is still a frail batting order. It was completely shown up on lively pitches in South Africa, and struggled to make 200 in the one game against the West Indies where the pitch had a bit of juice in it. Yuvraj is rusty, Dravid and Dhoni not quite at their best, Sachin on again and off again, really leaving Ganguly as the only reliable batsman in the top 6. Sehwag is in no sort of form so in the picture only on reputation; Karthik is a useful player in the slog, or as a pinch-hitting opener, but not someone I can see shepherding the innings through the middle overs the way a Sangakkara can for Sri Lanka; and Uthappa is, for all his brilliance, yet to string together two consecutive good scores.

2. Pathan has to be in the side, because we need an all-rounder for team balance, and for better or worse he’s the only one we have. Joginder should have been given more or a run, just as J.P. Yadav should have in 2005. But in the Indian system, only blue-eyed boys get any sort of fair treatment, and the likes of Joginder and Yadav don’t have a godfather who can ensure it for them. Still, no point lamenting that – selecting someone like Joginder with very little international experience on the basis of one failed performance is too much of a risk, so Pathan has to be in the team, and he has to be in the 11. It’s a big ask of the youngster, but there’s no alternative.

3. Yes, Zaheer, Munaf and Agarkar have to form the core of the seam attack. Zaheer has been outstanding since his comeback, Agarkar has bowled very well in one-dayers over the past year, and Munaf, except for the off-colour performance in South Africa, has added an extra dimension to the attack with his pace, all the while looking a steadier proposition than Sreesanth. I’m not sure that I’d play all three in the 11 though – if Pathan is in the 11, I’d much rather play 3 seamers and both Kumble and Harbhajan, rather than playing 4 seamers and keeping one of these quality spinners on the bench. Zaheer is a shoo-in, and my first pick would be Munaf ahead of Agarkar because of his extra pace, in an attack that is otherwise bordering on slow-medium. But Agarkar would be back-up to Munaf, or a fourth-seamer option if the wicket looks conducive to pace.

4. No question that Kumble and Bhajji have to be the two spinners in the squad. No other team in the tournament has a spin attack of this quality, and unlike in South Africa, West Indian wickets will help these two. They are crucial to our chances of victory, and the more they play in tandem, the better.

5. Between Sreesanth, Powar and Raina, I would take Sreesanth without a thought. Powar is a good player, but his loopy off-breaks and late order hitting can be more than matched by Sehwag’s loopy off-breaks and top / middle-order hitting. Even an out of form Sehwag is capable of contributing 20-30 with the bat, which is the most we can expect from Powar; and Sehwag’s good for 5-6 overs consistently. I don’t think Powar will add any value to the balance of the team, much as I like him as a player. Raina, meanwhile, is a disaster. If he is selected, it will be as a specialist fielder. But since he isn’t good enough to bat in the top 6, he will be a specialist substitute fielder. Are we really going to contemplate wasting a spot on someone who is likely to be on and off for the odd half an hour, in the hope that he will manufacture something in those periods that can win us games? Given how worrying our batting already looks, I would say forget it.

What this means is that I agree with 14 of the 15 that conventional wisdom dictates. The only worry I have is on the batting front, where I think that selecting both Karthik and Uthappa is a gamble. Between the two, Karthik is definitely my pick – he has shown temperament under pressure, provides a genuine wicket-keeping back-up to Dhoni, and can slot virtually anywhere in the batting order therefore providing the team management with more options. Uthappa has talent, and his day will come – I’m just not sure that I’m ready to risk him yet for such a big tournament.

The person I would risk would be one of the two forgotten men, Mohammad Kaif or V.V.S. Laxman. Kaif’s form has been distinctly inconsistent, but if Raina’s only claim to the team is his fielding, then I don’t know on what basis he can stake that claim ahead of Kaif – given that Kaif is as good in the field; has the experience of a World Cup and of winning games for India under high pressure; and made three 50s in 5 games in an otherwise disappointing one-day series in the West Indies last summer. The decision to select Raina ahead of Kaif in the recent series against West Indies was nothing less than stupidity at best, injustice and nepotism at worst.

But Kaif is struggling for runs, and Karthik does the role that Kaif does in the team now. What we really need is greater stability further up the order, which is why I would go back to Laxman as my last spot (and indeed, I would play him in the 11). This for the following reasons:

1. It has clearly been established over the past year that if we are to win this World Cup, only experience will do it for us. The exuberance of a Raina or an Uthappa is fine as a one-off, but to sustain the pressures of a long series playing in unfamiliar conditions against a variety of opposition, you need someone who’s seen it all before. Laxman has; he has an excellent record in the West Indies, and he knows how to handle pressure. We have gone back to experience with Ganguly, Zaheer and Kumble, and all of them have helped steady a rapidly sinking ship. Why not add Laxman to the mix?

2. Handling pressure is the key. When it comes to big-match temperament, I don’t know who over the last 5 or 6 years can match Laxman, except possibly Dravid and to some extent Kumble. All of India’s big wins have been scripted by Laxman, at least in a crucial supporting role – forget Kolkata in 2001, think of his key contributions in Adelaide in 2003, on a minefield in Bombay against the Aussies in 2004, in the West Indies last year where his century signaled the turning of the tide, his crucial innings in Johannesburg that set up our victory there … And this is not restricted to Tests – he was the one who played the defining innings in the series decider against Pakistan in the historic 2003-04 series, and remains the only Indian batsman to have made two one-day hundreds in Australia. Considering that Sehwag is being retained in the side purely on the basis of reputation, I don’t see why Laxman’s reputation isn’t being factored in to the same degree.

3. Hunger and desire – the reason why Ganguly has been so successful on his comeback has been sheer bloody-mindedness, the desire to prove himself and prove his detractors wrong. Laxman, so desperate to play a World Cup, will bring that same hunger to his game – unlike someone like Sehwag, who seems to have at least temporarily lost his altogether. That hunger is so crucial to success.

4. Ganguly, indeed, had little domestic form to back up his recall. It happened because of the failure of the youngsters combined with political and popular pressure. But Laxman continues to score in every opportunity he has got, and has started the Ranji one-day trophy with a couple of effortless 50s. What a travesty that he should be sitting around playing Tamilnadu when his team needs him to face off against Lee and McGrath (a fact that seems to be lost on his team management).

5. The readymade clincher against Laxman now is his fielding. But how that argument can be justified in a team that has slow movers like Ganguly, Sehwag and Kumble, and embarrassments like Munaf, is beyond me. Sure, Sehwag compensates for his slowness by taking sharp catches; but Laxman is the safest pair of hands in the Indian team (I don’t recall him dropping a single catch in the 6-7 years I’ve watched him play), which would make him invaluable at slip in the early overs, or in a short-cover / short-mid-wicket position in the later overs, or even at conventional mid-on and mid-off in the slog. And he has been bowling most effectively for Hyderabad (8 overs, 1/27 in one game, 4 overs, 1/15 in the next), which means that he’s more of a utility player than one would imagine. Considering that Raina has been deemed a “batting all-rounder” but has never been given the ball by Dravid, I don’t see that lack of all-round abilities can be used as a charge against him anyway.

My bottom-line is that the consensus conspiracy against Laxman – by the team management, the selectors, the media (who pressed Ganguly’s case constantly but don’t spare a thought for Laxman) and the public (where are the burning effigies now?) – is one of the travesties of contemporary Indian cricket. We know that inexperience has let us down, yet we have gone back to the likes of Uthappa just before the World Cup. We hunker on about Sehwag’s or Tendulkar’s reputation as making it “unthinkable” to drop them, but Laxman has scripted more famous wins from more desperate situations than either of these two has in their entire careers. We say he’s not shown form, but in fact have selected Ganguly on the basis of very little form, and indeed haven’t provided Laxman with the opportunity to show form – all he got was one game in a lost cause in South Africa, when he fell first ball. (Ganguly, who is being hailed since his comeback for his form, has fallen four-times since his comeback on the first or second ball, including most recently in the Ranji Trophy final). Suresh Raina has gotten 40 chances, but Laxman, it seems, isn’t even deserving of a second. His fielding is being held up as a liability, when in fact he’s the safest pair of hands in the country (along with the likes of Yuvraj), and no slower than at least half the men in the Indian team at present. In any case, the 20-odd runs that Raina might save in the field cannot compensate for the fact that Raina struggles to make more than 20 with the bat, while Laxman is good enough for a 100 any day. He apparently doesn’t provide “flexibility” – but I don’t see Uthappa batting anywhere except as opener, so don’t quite know what “flexibility” he would provide. In any case, we need quality, temperament and experience under pressure to win the World Cup, not flexibility and the willingness to slide around to stop the odd boundary.

If only the best fielding team is going to win the World Cup, then whether Laxman plays or not, Raina plays or not, it’s not going to be us. Even without Laxman, we are probably the second weakest fielding unit in the game (after Pakistan). That argument is rubbish in any case, since South Africa have been the best fielding unit in the world for the last 15 years, but have never won a World Cup. This is because they have, bar a very few players, not had the sheer class to be the best in the world; and because, push comes to shove, they have not had the temperament to pull big games out of the bag. It’s not fielding that wins you tournaments, it’s class and temperament. And on both counts, in a World Cup semi-final, I’d much rather see V.V.S. Laxman walk out in blue than Robin Uthappa (or almost anybody else).

Laxman, at this stage of his career, should be India’s vice-captain. He has team commitment, intelligence, and is a much smarter long-term appointment than Tendulkar, whom I don’t see taking over from Dravid in any long-term manner. Instead, he is being shunted out of the picture. The scandal is not his dropping, but the fact that no one is making an issue out of it. Now that all our TV idols, the Gangulys and the Sehwags are back, it doesn’t matter if less glamorous but equally valuable players are left out in the cold.

My World Cup team has a simple request – that Laxman be in it, at the crucial number 3 position. If, by a quirk of genius, the selectors see fit to include him, then we’re in with a real chance. Otherwise, there is no chance of bringing back the trophy, and given the treatment one of our finest servants would have been meted out, I frankly, in that case, wouldn’t give a damn.

My team:

Playing XI:

Sourav Ganguly
Sachin Tendulkar
V.V.S. Laxman (V)
Rahul Dravid ©
Yuvraj Singh
Mahendra Dhoni (W)
Irfan Pathan
Harbhajan Singh
Zaheer Khan
Anil Kumble
Munaf Patel

Reserves:

Virendra Sehwag
Dinesh Karthik (W)
Ajit Agarkar
S. Sreesanth