Unlike football managers, India's new cricket selectors, the first group to be paid for their wisdom, don't have to stand on the touchline and listen to what the crowd thinks of them. 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 the Chinnaswamy Stadium, venue for the first Test against Australia.
Picture this. The previous selection panel decides to break with the past and look to the future. With that and the middle-order meltdown against Sri Lanka in mind, they don't consider Sourav Ganguly for the Irani Trophy, the opening match of India's domestic season. When he's subsequently ignored for the Board President's XI, Australia's final tune-up before the first Test, the writing on the wall appears indelible. Surely no one in their right mind would select someone who hasn't struck a ball in anger since ending the Sri Lanka tour with 96 runs in three Tests?
This isn't about whether Ganguly deserves to be picked ahead of the many young bucks that have flattered to deceive; it's about the sheer idiocy of gambling on someone with no match practice. The opposition isn't Zimbabwe or Bangladesh. For all the chinks in the current Australian armour – the lack of a quality spinner being as prominent as Frank Bruno's glass chin – they are by some distance the most accomplished cricket side in the world. Ganguly's record against them has never been better than mediocre, and by denying him valuable match practice in the build-up to the Test, the powers that be have regressed to mystical-India methods, where the power of prayer and hope take precedence over rational thought and logic.
Is Ganguly better than Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina and everyone else that has been left by the wayside? Without a shadow of a doubt. Is he a potential matchwinner against Australia? Doubtful. 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 Bangalore with the same XI that were thrashed at the P Saravanamuttu by Sri Lanka, India are only wishing away a problem that was glaringly evident to anyone that watched the Tests against Sri Lanka without their heads buried in the sand.
Subramaniam Badrinath gets his chance, despite recent indifferent displays, but what will the selectors say to Kaif? That his brilliant 94 against Australia A counted for nothing when stacked up against two failures in the Irani Trophy? What will they say to Raina, whose dazzling 146 set up victory in a four-day game against New Zealand A? That they viewed the innings as a one-off? That the runs he made weren't as weighty as the wickets that clinched Amit Mishra's selection?
With Sachin Tendulkar now fit, India will field the same top six they used against Sri Lanka. Mahendra Singh Dhoni returns to the Test fold, and will be under immediate scrutiny after his unconvincing batting in Australia earlier this year. Mishra's role will be no different from Pragyan Ojha's in Sri Lanka, namely riding the pine. Who will explain to Ojha and Rohit how they slipped out of contention despite not playing any part in the Sri Lanka series?
The one good thing about this farce is the fact that it will finally take attention away from the Greg Chappell non-story that has had the local media in a lather ever since the Australians arrived more than a week ago. It's not unusual for the head coach from Australia's Centre of Excellence to join the team on overseas tours. Tim Nielsen, now the main man, did just that back in 2004, when John Buchanan was coach of the side that finally won a series in India.
If you read much of what's been written in the Indian papers and the blogosphere though, Chappell is part-Quisling, part-Trojan horse and part-Judas. That he's a professional whose job with Indian cricket ended in April 2007 appears to have escaped the attention. Or is there a subtle implication that coaching the Indian team should be followed by vanvas [renunciation of worldly life]?
The main grouse seems to be that Chappell has access to Team India's "secrets". In an age when a 12-year-old with a DVD player can analyse and break down passages of play, that's a ludicrous accusation. As Chappell himself said in a press conference that garnered more attention than anything Ricky Ponting has done, there are no secrets in international cricket anymore, especially when teams play each other as frequently as India and Australia do.
What pointers could be passed on to Ponting and friends? That Tendulkar prefers neer dosa with his prawn koliwada? That Virender Sehwag has a fondness for arrowroot biscuits at teatime? Really, some of the reporting takes the biscuit.
