Tricky decisions await selectors for World T20 selection

[Feed]

More... MS Dhoni worried by India's form going into the World Twenty20 Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble will be hard to replace as India look to bounce back from the embarrassment of last year's title defence MS Dhoni is worried by the unavailability of key players and a lack of form shown by others before the World Twenty20. Spare a thought for MS Dhoni. Sidelined by an arm injury, he has watched Chennai Super Kings sink like a stone. Deprived of the services of Andrew Flintoff and Jacob Oram long before the tournament began, Dhoni now has worries over Justin Kemp, whose big hitting and canny seam bowling were expected to be pivotal to Chennai's chances of making the last four for a third successive year. Dhoni himself could return on Thursday night against the high-flying Mumbai Indians, and he then faces an exhausting 24 hours as the team management and the national selectors finalise the 15-man party that will journey to the Caribbean in late April for the World Twenty20. India won the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007 in some style, upsetting Andrew Symonds and setting off a chain of events that culminated in the IPL becoming India's summer sport. The defence of the title in England last year, though, was an embarrassment, with the team unable to register a win in the Super Eights. The disappointment was exarcerbated by a Cinderella story set to a soundtrack of Dil Dil Pakistan and banners that said things like: "Cost of match ticket: £40, Cost of replica shirt: £20, India going home: Priceless." The players had gone to England right after the IPL in South Africa, and Gary Kirsten, India's coach, was far from amused by some of the half-baked cricket he witnessed when the stakes were high. "The IPL is a domestic competition, a club competition in many respects," he said afterwards. "Whilst you have international players in the team, you've got first-class cricketers making up the rest. We had a bunch of cricketers who arrived quite tired. We have had a demanding schedule and we never got ourselves to the required intensity for the standard and quality of the international game, which is higher than IPL. We weren't an energetic team." With just over a month to go before the team departs for this year's tournament, there are already warning signs that India's descent into Twenty20 mediocrity could continue unabated. As it is, Dhoni and the selectors are hamstrung by the unavailability of two men who would walk into any side in the world if they felt like it. Sachin Tendulkar will be 37 in April and Anil Kumble 40 in October, and neither man is remotely interested even as they travel around the country enjoying the most Indian of summers. Tendulkar's batting so far in the IPL has been sublime. He's scored his 176 runs at a strike-rate of 155.75, and not cleared the rope once. Instead, there have been 28 fours, struck with impeccable timing and power. On Monday night, he took 36 off the 16 balls that Ishant Sharma bowled to him, prompting a grim Sourav Ganguly to say: "I hope he learns from the experience and is a better bowler for it." As for Kumble, whose economy-rate of just over five would be excellent for 50-overs cricket, he's still the best spinner in the land by the width of the Indian Ocean. The leggies that seek to fill the breach have had distinctly average seasons so far, with Amit Mishra likely to edge out Piyush Chawla. Things are no different in the left-arm-spin department, with Pragyan Ojha nothing like as effective as Murali Kartik, whose prolonged quarantine perplexes those who have watched him bowl. With Gautam Gambhir injured and Yuvraj Singh woefully out of sorts, there are concerns aplenty with the batting as well. Both Saurabh Tiwary, the left-handed Dhoni impersonator, and Robin Uthappa, who's finally abandoned improvisation in favour of more straight hitting, sit near the top of the run charts, but neither was part of the 30-man preliminary squad. There will be quite a tussle for the last couple of batting slots. Rohit Sharma's classy and composed innings against South Africa was instrumental in India winning in 2007, but he has regressed since, while Virat Kohli hasn't adapted to Twenty20 quite as well as he has to the 50-over game. My pick would be another Bangalorean, Manish Pandey, impressive alongside the evergreen Jacques Kallis at the top of the Royal Challengers' line-up and a young man with a real appetite for the big occasion. As for the allround spot, the choice is between a banned player, Ravindra Jadeja, and Yusuf Pathan, a fairground sitting-duck in front of the well-directed short ball. At least on placid Caribbean pitches, India should score enough runs. Taking wickets is another matter. RP Singh and Sreesanth have bowled so atrociously that only an act of charity will get them into the XV, while Ishant has become a pantomime version of the bowler who caused Ricky Ponting such problems in Perth two years ago. The best Indian pacer on view so far has been Bangalore's Praveen Kumar, who compensates for lack of pace with his ability to do something other than "landing it in the right areas". His team-mate Vinay Kumar has also impressed, though he looks a few clicks too slow to be a factor in international cricket. Ashish Nehra's return from [yet another] injury can't come soon enough, though, and Dhoni will have sleepless nights hoping that Zaheer Khan stays fit for another six weeks. Will the squad picked live up to sky-high expectations? Just as importantly, what will it say of the IPL, this six-week hothouse of Twenty20 talent? If the pitches favour batsmen, India could conceivably sneak a semi-final place. Without the two grey eminences who could have made such a difference, anything more is unlikely, unless several of the bowlers stop throwing pies and rediscover the mojo that got them this far. My squad - First XI in bold Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Manish Pandey, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni (capt, wk), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Dinesh Karthik, Yusuf Pathan, Amit Mishra, Virat Kohli.

[vvvslaxman]

Send a rookie team filled with promising and inform youngsters. You never know. They might surprise again.

[bharathh]

Good article... A bit doom and gloom .. but spot on about the bowling. Not so worried about the batting though.

[cowboysfan]

lol,we have absolutely no chance at all,i will be suprised if they even make it to the semis,the same goes for the world cup in 2011 for the record -vinay kumar is faster than zaheer khan..

[vvvslaxman]

But gotta say very good analysis on each and every player. I have the exact same opinion about these players. Either they are in form and not good in T20 or out of form and good in T20. Irfan not in probables. Uthappa not in probables. Tiwary not in probables.

[cowboysfan]

i would rather pick uthappa(who can be a backup keeper)than kohli who will never get a game .

[zen]

My squad - First XI in bold Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Manish Pandey, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni (capt, wk), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Dinesh Karthik, Yusuf Pathan, Amit Mishra, Virat

That's a decent side. But it needs a 4th seamer in the reserves in case before a game one of the 3 gets injured. And seamers are more prone to injuries, arent they?

[Vikas Bhatt]

last time Indians got wasted was due to exhaustion and niggling injuries playing non-stop IPL over 2 months just before the 'WC'. The idiot Lalit Modi has repeated the same mistake again. Expect another first round exit.

[saneindian]

Our recent record in WI is nothing to gloat about, lost the 2006 ODI series 4-1, first round exit in 2007 WC, We did win a series recently, but that was just a filler!! And when I look at the probable squad, only Sehwag and Dhoni inspire confidence. Hopefully for our sake, Yuvi and Raina find their mojo back before heading for the Carribean.

[cowboysfan]

only small sliver of a rainbow for us is the pitches in the caribbean will be more helpful for our spinners than the ones in india.i would play 2 frontline spinners if the track is slow and low like the ones in the zimbabwe series.

[Feed]

Tricky decisions await selectors for World T20 selection When K Srikkanth and the four other national selectors sit together on Friday to pick the team for the Twenty20 World Cup that will be played in the West Indies shortly, they’ll have a couple of tricky decisions to make before they get down to discussing the names of players, reports Anand Vasu. More... Tricky decisions await selectors Anand Vasu, Hindustan Times Bangalore, March 26, 2010 When K Srikkanth and the four other national selectors sit together on Friday to pick the team for the Twenty20 World Cup that will be played in the West Indies shortly, they’ll have a couple of tricky decisions to make before they get down to discussing the names of players. Firstly, the selectors have to decide how much they will be swayed by performances in the IPL. Given that the tournament is a T20 event and that the best in the world take part, the wise men might well choose to base their decisions on performances in the event. The tournament has received saturation coverage, and it will be difficult for the selectors to think of performances in past Indian T20 international matches. However, they would do well to place some store in those games as Mahendra Singh Dhoni will want a unit that gels well and has played together in the past. The other policy decision the selectors have to make is whether to merely prune the original list of 30 probables to 15, or look outside this long list. While this will mean an admission of sorts that the selectors failed to pick the best possible 30, it would be in the best interests of the team to pick men in form. While the romantic debate of whether Sachin Tendulkar should be dragged back into the shortest version of the game is unlikely to occupy any time in the meeting that will be held at the Cricket Centre in the BCCI’s offices in Mumbai, other players could hope for the best. The International Cricket Council clarified that there was nothing in the rules to stop a country from picking players from outside the original list of 30 probables. “The squad of 15 players can be selected out of the provisional squad,” an ICC spokesperson clarified. “But once the final squad is announced, the team needs clearance/approval from the Event Technical Committee to replace an injured player with a player who is outside the provisional squad.” Fitness permitting, 11 players pick themselves, leaving four spots open, the second spinner’s, the reserve batsman’s and two medium-pacers. If the selectors decide that it’s ok to look beyond the original 30 they will think hard about left-arm spinner Murali Kartik, who has comfortably out-bowled the competition. He has sent down 19 overs at an economy rate of 5.7, seven of which were bowled with field restrictions on. The biggest headache is with the medium-pacers, as Ishant Sharma has struggled for form and question marks remain over Ashish Nehra. Vinay Kumar’s name will certainly come up for discussion, as could Munaf Patel. If the selectors want a spare batsman, Manish Pandey and Robin Uthappa are frontrunners, having scored quickly and innovatively. .

[gaurav92]

I hope they pick the following team of 15 for the T20 WC in the Carribean Islands. Sehwag Gambhir Kohli Yuvraj Uthappa Yusuf Manish Pandey Dinesh Karthik MS Dhoni Raina Zaheer Harbhajan Jadeja Vinay Kumar/Balaji PK

[CG]

I hope they pick the following team of 15 for the T20 WC in the Carribean Islands. Sehwag Gambhir Kohli Yuvraj Uthappa Yusuf Manish Pandey Dinesh Karthik MS Dhoni Raina Zaheer Harbhajan Jadeja Vinay Kumar/Balaji PK

vinaykumar and balaji.p.k should play only domestic and internatinallyy if we tour southafrica ,on westindian pitches with small grounds they would be raped in daylight.seriously mediumpacers were hammered in wc 2007 and we could not depend against bangladesh,unless ishant,sreesanth gets there form we do not have a chance in hell.

[hatja_tau]

IMO Irfan fits the bill at no.8 perfectly. I dont think Kohli would be of much use!

[zubinpepsi]

I hope they select Irfan.... hes much better bowler and batsman than the jokers we have.. and ow pls no munaf patel...... a nd no 120 kmh trundler vinay kumar pls..