SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF IDEAL SELECTION POLICY
There is no doubt that one of the reasons why England has risen to the top of world cricket is because of some sound, consistent selection policies; just as, indeed, Australia was helped by that in their rise to the top under Trevor Hohns’ selection committee. In an earlier post, I have mentioned who I would like to have as my ideal new Indian selection committee. (My wish list comprises: Mohinder Amarnath [chairman], Lalchand Rajput, Sanjay Jagdale, Dilip Doshi and Venkatesh Prasad). But regardless of who comprises the committee, if India is to do well, then identifying, nurturing and managing the right players is of paramount importance. Currently, none of these are done right. Identifying talent happens through a haphazard process of guesswork and trial and error. When it pays off, the selectors pat themselves on the back; when it doesn’t, nobody holds them accountable. Talent is also not properly nurtured. This is why, 6 years after their debut, none of Suresh Raina, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel or R.P. Singh is playing a consistent, leadership role in the Indian side. And the terrible management of our players was all too evident in England, especially in contrast to the meticulous way in which England has started managing its players.
Harsha Bhogle has suggested that a dossier of Indian players needs to be maintained, so that a plan for how best to manage each of them is chalked out and adhered to. I agree entirely, and in my next post I will hone in on the specifics of individual players and their performances as my version of a dossier. But in this post, what I want to do is set down some general principles of policy that should be at the heart of any selection process. I have alluded to some of these in earlier posts. And all of these are simple, common-sense suggestions, not something that needs rocket science. Yet I have not heard a single pundit in the media suggest some of these things, except, to a certain extent, Nasser Hussein, who has mentioned some of these (but not all) in the context of systems that have been set up in England. So here are five basic principles that should be part of any Indian selection policy, none of which are currently part of the way in which the Indian team is selected.
1. Selection should be based on performance
You would think this would be a no-brainer, yet hardly ever is the selection of the Indian team consistently based on performance. If it had been, then at the very least, Subramaniam Badrinath would have played more than 2 Tests (and would, in my reckoning, have cemented his place in the Test middle order by now much more convincingly than either Raina or Yuvraj have done); Praveen Kumar’s Test career would have begun far sooner than it did; Ajinkya Rahane would have been in the picture at the start of the last season, instead of accidentally being pulled in towards the end; and given our laments about the lack of fast bowling talent in the country, Pankaj Singh, who was the highest wicket-taker in domestic cricket last year, would have at least been part of the Emerging Players tour to Australia this summer. The fact that none of this has happened should be a scandal. But because these are low-profile players and not superstars who can get millions in advertising endorsements, even the pundits don’t bring it up. So there will be laments about the lack of technically sound batsmen, but not about Badri’s continued exclusion; laments about the lack of fast bowlers, but not about the way in which Pankaj Singh has been ignored. And very few questions are being raised about why it has taken so long for Rahane and PK to come into the picture, and why in both cases this has only happened because of injuries to others.
Of course it is true that performance alone cannot count for selection, which requires judgment as well, which is inherently subjective. And there are people who perform exceptionally well in domestic cricket, such as Arun Lal and Vikram Rathour, who are found out at the international level. A domestic format such as what I suggested in my previous post, which would require at least a few weeks where domestic cricketers play with and against some of the best cricketers in India and the world across all formats, would help in identifying whether top domestic performers also have the chops to cut it against the best. But the bottom line is, if someone performs well in domestic cricket, he should at least be given a proper run at the international level – it shouldn’t be decided in advance that he doesn’t have what it takes to make the cut. Everyone who performs in domestic cricket should at least be given a chance to fail in international cricket. The fact is that we are lamenting the lack of talent in the country, while at the same time, the highest run-getter (Badri) and the highest wicket-taker (Pankaj) is domestic cricket last year were not even sent on the Emerging Players tour. That is nothing short of scandalous, and the fact that it has not even been raised as an issue is a crying shame.
2. Everyone should be treated equally
One of the biggest pitfalls in Indian cricket is that there are different standards for different people. Some of this is just because of nepotism, explicit or implicit. How else can one explain Aniruddha Srikkanth being part of the Emerging Players’ tournament in Australia, while Badrinath, the highest scorer in domestic cricket last year, wasn’t? Or that Rohan Gavaskar managed to be a part of India’s one-day side for nearly 6 months in 2004, which served no other purpose than denying Hemang Badani a chance to stake his claim to a long-term middle order berth and effectively ended his promising international career before he turned 25?
But some of it is also because of the way we evaluate our players. Inherently, we go for style over substance. This is not just a failing of the selectors, everyone falls prey to it – the media, and the so-called experts included. This is why people still wax eloquent over Suresh Raina after he has been repeatedly shown up on lively pitches, but don’t make any mention of Badrinath. If given half the chances that Raina has been given, Badri would be ten times the Test batsman. But Raina is an exciting batsman, even if that excitement comes with poor technique and little substance, and we prefer that to consistency. As I said in a previous post, Jonathan Trott would never have made it to an Indian side.
We also go excessively by first impressions. I remember when I was in 5th standard, in a new school, and I got my first chance to bat in a lunchtime game. As I walked out, my captain, Amit Jain, said, dekhte hain kuccha hai ki pukka. I got out first ball. Kuccha, he immediately said. And I never got a chance to bat again as long as I was in that school. The point is not that I was a great batsman as a 10-year old. The point is that the Amit Jain syndrome pervades Indian selection policy. How good you are is not determined by what you do over time, it is determined by what you do when you get your first opportunity. If you grab it, or at least look pretty while failing, then you get a long rope. Otherwise, the rope is snapped and it’s very hard to get a second chance.
By consistent selection policy, I mean that if someone is considered good enough to play for India, then he deserves at least 10 Test matches or 20 limited overs games to prove his worth. It is true that the occasional person might seem exceptionally talented and can be given a slightly longer rope. It is also true that some people may not need 10 Tests to be shown up – it was clear after one series in England that Vikram Rathour would be best qualified to be a specialist slip-catching coach (and not because he was a particularly good slip catcher himself). But Badrinath being discarded after just 2 Tests and Raina being persisted with for an entire year, in any other profession, would be regarded simply as discrimination and be deemed illegal.
3. Think about 5 bowlers
I have said this earlier. Ultimately, winning a Test match requires taking 20 wickets. However strong your batting is, if you cannot take 20 wickets, you cannot win. This is why, even if we had been at full strength in England this summer, we would likely have lost, if not so humiliatingly. England has risen to the top on the strength of a good, strong, versatile bowling attack. We rose to the top on the strength of our batting. The former is always going to count for more. And what is encouraging for England, and scary for everyone else, is that England’s bowling reserves just seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Simon Kerrigan is the latest, a left-arm spinner of enormous potential, which means the likelihood of a second spinner to partner Swann, and hence the likelihood of success in the sub-continent. With young Irishman George Dockrell also eventually likely to play for England, England is likely to have the best fast and spin bowlers in the world.
And this, for me, is the biggest drawback of Dhoni as a captain. It is his stubborn refusal to even contemplate a 5-bowler attack. I can understand certain situations in which you would want an extra batsman. And I can understand wishing for a genuine all-rounder, though by now we should reconcile ourselves to the fact that we don’t have one in the country. But the come-what-may attitude to having only 4 bowlers has no excuse. It is true that Australia rose to world dominance on that formula. But that was because their 4 bowlers were Warne, McGrath, Gillespie and Lee.
There are many specific reasons why having five bowlers would work to our advantage, and as I work through my player dossier in my next post I will point these out. But the most general reason is this – if you don’t have quality, then make it up with quantity. Throughout the England series, we have lamented the fact that we don’t have bowling talent – why did none of the experts who were lamenting this suggest a fifth bowler at any stage? Dhoni kept grumbling about the bad luck that left us without Zaheer and Harbhajan at Lord’s and Trent Bridge respectively, leaving us with just 3 bowlers in each case. Injuries are bad luck, but being left with 3 bowlers was not – there is no law in cricket that says you should just have 4 bowlers in your side, especially when one of them is not terrifically fit anyway and coming off a long lay-off. Throughout the series, we played with the extra batsman as insurance. But that extra batsman was Raina, who provided no insurance, and added no value, whatsoever. There were critical stages in the series – in England’s second innings at Lord’s, and their first innings at Trent Bridge – when that little bit extra with the ball could have won us those phases of the game. Those were phases that turned out be the crucial phases of the series writ large – once we lost those, the rest was all over bar the shouting. What a difference an extra bowler would have made then. How unbelievable that no one is holding Dhoni accountable for this absolute refusal to even consider a fifth bowler.
Even the past few years, there have been three reasons why we have managed to survive with the 4-bowler formula. The first is that, until England’s emergence as a force over the past year, Australia was the only side that really had a batting line-up with 7 top-class batsmen who could each win a game off their own bat. And that too was only until 2007-8. Once Hayden and Gilchrist retired, and without McGrath and Warne creating pressure with the ball, Australia’s batting line-up was no longer that formidable. In 2004, with just 4 bowlers, we were toast against the Aussies, though we fared better in Australia in 2007-8 thanks to some exceptional bowling from R.P. Singh and Ishant Sharma. The second is that over the last 4 years, Zaheer has been exceptional, not just in creating the key breakthroughs himself, but in orchestrating the entire bowling attack and getting the best out of each of the younger bowlers. We have to realize that Zak is now near the end of his career – perhaps he has even already played his last Test match. We cannot count on his stewardship of the bowling attack anymore.
The third reason is something that has often been glossed over, which is the utility of Sourav Ganguly as a medium-pace back-up bowler, which has allowed us the flexibility to choose between a 3-1 seam attack or a 2-2 attack even while playing abroad. (Let us remember that the famous win in Headingley in 2002, on a green top, came about with only 2 frontline seamers and Kumble and Harbhajan in the attack. But backing them up were Ganguly and Sanjay Bangar). Hardly any of our current back-up bowlers – Sehwag or Tendulkar (on the rare occasions they bowl) or Yuvraj or Raina – bowl medium-pace. On Indian wickets, that is alright, but while playing abroad this severely curtails our options, both in team selection (because then selecting 3 seamers becomes a must, which leaves only one frontline spinner as an option) and in terms of who the captain can turn to in order to break a partnership. (Someone like Raina on an Indian dustbowl can be a partnership breaker; in England, he is simply an early Christmas gift to the batsmen). This is one of the many reasons why – if we were to play only 4 bowlers – then our no. 6 batsman should be Virat Kohli, who is the only part-time slow medium bowler in the country who is also a contender for a Test batting spot. (There are more substantial reasons having to do with Kohli’s batting as to why he should be first in line for the no. 6 spot, but I leave those to my next post).
4. Manage the middle generation
All the pundits have been talking about the transition from the seniors to the juniors. Some have been mentioning this in anxious tones, as in – what will happen when Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman retire? Other, more idiotic voices, have decided that it is time for the seniors to retire, as if it was Dravid being in the team that caused us to lose 4-0 in England. Both opinions are missing the point.
Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman are three of the greatest players to have played for India, and there is no question that they have had a big hand in getting India to the top of world cricket. But in fact, they don’t form the core of the team anymore. For one, only Sachin really plays one-day cricket anymore, and he too cherry-picks his series. So while they have had a huge role to play in Test successes, they have not been central to limited-overs successes.
But more than that – the core of any team is its leadership generation. The Big Three are the senior statesmen of the side, imparting grace, maturity, providing something to fall back on and allowing the younger players the safety and security of their shadow to play under. But the core leadership of the side over the past 4 years, which has really been at the heart of India’s rise to number 1, has been the generation just below – specifically, Sehwag, Gambhir, Dhoni and Zaheer. These are not youngsters – two are in their 30s, the other two are nearly there – and two have played over a decade of international cricket. The Big Three had been playing excellent cricket for a decade or more before India’s rise to the top started in 2007-8. But it was the embellishing of the side by the Middle Four that really took India to the top.
India’s rise, indeed, started by a coming together of these four players, and four factors, between mid-2007 and early-2008. The first was the emergence of a fitter, craftier Zaheer Khan after his sojourn with Worcestershire. The inconsistent and frustrating talent had morphed into a bowler of skill and the leader of the bowling unit, which meant that for the first time since Kapil Dev was at his peak, India had a new ball bowler who could consistently get us an early breakthrough, usually of a key opposition batsman. The second was the emergence of a hungry Sehwag, who like Zak had also gone through lots of turmoil, but returned to play some of his best cricket between 2008 and 2010. This meant that India had an opening batsman who could dent the opposition – even a quick 30 or 40 from him would mean a 50-run opening partnership regardless of the wicket or conditions, and often we would get something much more substantial, a quick 150 for instance. These two made India potent at the top, whether batting or bowling. The third was a reliable opening partner to Sehwag, Gambhir, who also had to take the hard knocks early and needed 2 or 3 years to establish himself in the side. Gambhir 2.0 had the hunger and consistency of a Michael Hussey – a ruthlessly determined fellow who had to come up the hard way, and who clearly valued his India cap every time he went out to bat. He provided an ideal foil to Sehwag, capable of playing the sheet anchor while Viru was on song, but also capable to playing the attacking role if Viru got out early. From having openers who were a liability for much of our cricketing history (with the exception of Gavaskar), we suddenly had the best opening combination in world cricket. And fourth was Dhoni taking over the captaincy. The instinctual risk-taker who won us the inaugural T20 World Cup was quickly replaced by a more conservative leader who was willing to choke the opposition and determined first of all not to lose, but his real genius was in bringing the team together as a unit. In this he was no doubt helped greatly by Gary Kirsten, the icing on the cake.
These are the four who need to be managed. This is because the Big Three manage themselves. Two only play Test cricket, Sachin by now knows when and how much to play, and all of them are terrific at preparing themselves for series. They should be allowed to play as long as they have the hunger, and we should savor their presence while they do.
It is the Middle Four, however, who have been wrung dry over the past four years, and we saw the result in England – injuries, poor form, mental fatigue, more injuries. These four have played in all formats of the game, and supplement that by playing central roles in the various T20 tamashas such as IPL and the Champions League. The attitude towards them has basically been to play them whenever they are fit – Dhoni and Sehwag in particular are just too marketable for it to be even conceivable that they be rested. And they themselves – Dhoni in particular – have the sportsman’s instinctual self-imagination of themselves as supermen, willing to push themselves that little bit more, until they actually break down. With Viru and Zak already in their 30s, and Dhoni having captained and kept wicket in 3 forms of the game over the past 4 years, this has to stop. These are the four who are India’s leaders – batting leaders, bowling leaders, tactical leaders, personnel leaders – and these are the four that we need to manage the transition that is about to happen. Unless some strategy is devised to preserve them and ensure they are at their best for the games that matter most – even (especially) if it means curtailing what formats they play or how much they play – the Indian team will be in big trouble. I think it is too much to expect that those who run Indian cricket today will have the vision to manage them properly, but in terms of personnel, figuring out how to deal with these four now is far more critical than figuring out what to do with, or after, the Big Three.
5. Monitor contracted players, and have a clear second string handy
Nasser Hussein has talked about how England’s rise to the top has been founded on a rigorous monitoring of contracted players. Earlier, they would just be playing too much cricket, and fast bowlers would often show up knackered on a Thursday morning after having played county cricket earlier in the week. One of the things that began to be initiated in Hussein’s time was a system by which England cricket was placed above county cricket. In India, the national team needs to be placed above the needs of IPL franchises. This is much harder to do, because there is money and conflict of interest. So for instance, it is not in the interests of either of Chairman of Selectors or the Board President to rest Dhoni from the Champions League, since he captains a team that they are involved with. Yet, before another grueling season, surely Dhoni, of all people, needs and deserves a break? Especially given that he has to also keep wickets and captain when playing for India. Now the only way he will get a break before the big Australia series is if he is rested for the return ODIs against England, or against the West Indies. And that is a classic case of putting franchise ahead of country, encouraged, even mandated, by the top brass of the Indian cricketing administration.
But player management in England involved more than taking on the counties, and there are some other things that England has done since 2007 that are more easily replicable because they don’t involve crossing corrupt administrators. Hussein for instance talked about how Steve Harmison showed up for the 2007 Ashes series in Australia completely unfit and unprepared. Now, England has a system where all contracted players are constantly monitored. This is especially important for fast bowlers, where every ball that they bowl, whether in international cricket, domestic cricket, or the nets, is monitored. This ensures that when they play for England, they are in peak shape. There will still be the unforeseen injuries, as happened with Tremlett and Broad this summer. But there is no question that in terms of form, fitness and preparation, England was streets ahead of India. There would be no possibility of a player who was on the fringes of England selection today having to be pulled out of holiday in Miami and plumped into the middle of a Test match with a bulging waistline and absolutely no rhythm.
There is no reason why such a monitoring system cannot be replicated in India. And it could be run by something like a cricket committee, which Harsha Bhogle has suggested, who would effectively keep tabs on contracted players and be in conversation with selectors and team management about them. Bhogle has suggested that Anil Kumble be the head of such a committee. This would be an excellent idea, and would complement his role as head of the National Cricket Academy. Right now, the NCA is more or less a glorified gym, where players head to practice for a couple of weeks before a tour or when they are being rehabilitated from injury. Kumble could be given the authority to turn it into a central monitoring station for contracted Indian players. He could be helped by Sourav Ganguly, who is one of the most astute judges of talent in Indian cricket, and T.A. Sekhar, who knows a thing or two about preparation for fast bowlers because of his years of experience at the MRF Pace Academy.
Alongside the monitoring, it should be clear who is waiting in the wings to replace someone in case of injury. At this point, it seems like the selectors more or less dip their fingers into a hat and pull a name out when someone gets injured. When England tours, on the other hand, there is always a parallel England Lions tour. If someone has to be replaced in the regular tour, then there is someone who is already fit, match-ready and in form who can take his place.
This should be a no-brainer, especially with a huge series in Australia coming up. It requires no change in established structures, it doesn’t even require imagination. It requires the basic intelligence of a three-year old. Yet I have not heard a single person suggest this. “Preparation” for the Australia series now involves the BCCI asking the Aussie board for a second tour game. Why is it not obvious that we should also, simultaneously, be sending an A team to tour New Zealand? Everyone on the senior team should have a mirror on the A team. Everyone on the A team will be match-fit and ready, and would be playing on lively wickets that are more similar to Australian wickets than any they would encounter playing Ranji Trophy cricket. And it would be possible to assess who is in form, who is ready to step into an injured player’s shoes. If Gambhir, Sehwag and Rahane are openers in Australia, then Jaffer, Mukund and Vijay should be playing in New Zealand; Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Kohli and Badrinath should be shadowed by Yuvraj, Raina, Rohit, Pujara and Tiwary. And so on.
None of these basic principles require too much imagination to institute. All of them are basic, common sense suggestions, and have to do with instituting consistency, rewarding performance, setting up certain systems of preparation, and managing players so that they are at their most ready when they play for India. This should not be too much to ask for. The fact that most of these are, in reality, inconceivable, only proves the utter intellectual and moral bankruptcy of those who currently run the game in India, and provides the basic reasons why we were trounced so badly this summer.
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