In a long time, India’s selectors have not had it this easy while naming a Test squad for an overseas tour.
It will be nearly three years now since India made a meaningful Test tour to a country outside Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and West Indies. So there was naturally a lot of interest around the selection. The performances in the last three years under Virat Kohli, especially in the Test match format, leave you confused about what to make of the chances of the squad on a tough South Africa tour.
If you have grown up in the 1990s, then you would be a pessimist, because that was really a ‘lost’ generation, but if you are from the 2000s then you would be quietly confident. However, if you are really someone from the 2010s, you don’t really care about cricket in whites.
In some sense Kohli has transported us back to the 2000s with his interest and involvement in the Test match format, leaving us quietly confident about the squad’s chances.
Kohli, Shastri’s ‘Chosen Ones’
This was echoed as much by the chief selector MSK Prasad when he was naming the squad for the South Africa Test tour on Monday, 4 December. Prasad’s panel showed a shift in the make-up of the Indian squads that will tour in the next 12 months on the tough away Test tours of South Africa, England and Australia. In many ways there is an imprint of Kohli and head coach Ravi Shastri on the squad chosen for the South African tour.
One look at the names and it is clear that India is going to hit back as hard as it gets with pace.
This had been Indian cricket’s biggest bane over the years, but it started changing in the 2000s. It is pretty much the same template that has been borrowed this time, but with a bit more firepower.
As many as six pace bowlers, if you count Hardik Pandya as one of the frontline quicks, are in the squad. This has never been the case with Indian cricket, where we have almost been apologetic to even call our seamers as quicks and refer to them as new ball bowlers.
So it is quite a tectonic shift in the way Indian cricket under Kohli is going to approach overseas Test tours.
Bumrah’s Induction Could’ve Been Resisted
While most of the squad picked itself up, there was a particular interest around the selection of Jasprit Bumrah and exclusion of Kuldeep Yadav.
Now, Bumrah is India’s best bet in coloured clothing with the white ball. He will be the most important bowler for India at the 2019 World Cup in England. But this clarion call for him to be inducted into the Test squad should have been resisted.
With India playing some tough away Test series in 2018-19, Bumrah could have been kept away from the rigours of the longer format. We ideally want a Bumrah who is fresh and raring to go at the 2019 World Cup. Any long days on flat tracks can really dent his confidence. Bumrah’s Test initiation could have started right after the 2019 World Cup.
With just one tour game and three almost back to back Test matches, there will hardly be an opportunity for much chopping and changing. Unless India falters dramatically, there may not be any opportunity for Bumrah in Test matches immediately anyways. He will probably end up bowling a lot in the nets. Is that really how we want our best white ball bowler to be battle ready?
On the other hand we may have ended up messing with the mind of Yadav. His variety and quality could have been of more value in South Africa. Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja may be among the world’s top five Test bowlers, but they have not been tested away from the subcontinent like conditions.
On the last round of overseas tours in 2013-14, only one of Jadeja or Ashwin played and hardly made any impact.
This was therefore an opportune time to throw someone completely unorthodox into the mix and create options for the captain.
Now it is all but a toss-up between Ashwin and Jadeja, with the major focus being on the pace bowlers.
On a short Test tour while the squad has chosen itself, there is no back-up middle-order batsman. This is a huge vote of confidence for both an out of form vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane and the mercurial limited-overs vice-captain Rohit Sharma. Instead the only man probably likely to put some pressure on the duo is the back-up wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel. It will be 15 years since Patel first played for India and he is still just 32!
The Seasoned Wicketkeepers
While naming the squad for the T20I series against Sri Lanka, the selectors also showed how amazingly for close to 15 years our wicket-keeping options have revolved around three names – Patel, MS Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik. Thanks to Dhoni, the other two have had a tough time to make the squads as first choice options, but even now they are being considered as options. India could end up having four wicket-keepers on the South Africa tour – two for red ball cricket and two for white ball cricket!
The only major positive from the selection meeting on Monday, 4 December, was finally seeing some clarity in the way our T20I squads are chosen.
Since India won the 2007 World Twenty20, we have never chosen a specialist T20I squad. Instead performers in ODI cricket were being given opportunity for a hit in T20 Internationals.
Now, with the selection of the likes of Washington Sundar, Basil Thampi and Deepak Hooda, performers in the Indian Premier League (IPL) have finally been considered. In short horses for courses policy has finally been applied for the T20I squad. Let’s hope it’s not a short-term measure and instead a long term policy to choose the best T20 performers in India.
(Chandresh Narayanan is former cricket writer with The Times of India, The Indian Express, ex-Media Officer for ICC and current media manager of Delhi Daredevils. He is also the author of World Cup Heroes, Cricket Editorial consultant, professor and cricket TV commentator.)
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