Emotional selection of seniors hurt India in South Africa

When you keep playing senior players ignoring the current reality, you are also simultaneously giving yourself less time to keep backing the younger players, writes Sanjay Manjrekar

Like the perfect storm, India lost the last match of the tour narrowly to finish off the trip.

India's Bhuvneshwar Kumar (AP)

It’s not like India have not had such crushing defeats in the past, they have, but it’s the context in which this defeat happened that makes it so glaring: India’s overseas performances and results have improved and they were playing the weakest South Africa team any touring Indian team has ever encountered.

Mind you, Indian cricket is not now suddenly in poor health. There is enough “going right” in Indian cricket for this to be looked at as a bump on the road a few years from now. That is, if the right measures are taken.

I found a parallel in both the Test and one-day defeats—the same mistakes were responsible for both defeats. Team selection!

Specifically, letting incumbency prevail despite adequate warnings and notices that it would come back to hurt you. Refusing to look beyond the ageing, well “past their prime” players cost India the Test series and the same approach cost them the one-dayers.

With due respect to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, did his performance in the series come as a surprise? That Ashwin wasn’t the game-changing spinner India wanted, did that also come as a shock to us?

No.

Like with the batters in the Tests, with Bhuvi too, there has been ample evidence that he is struggling to be the bowler he used to be, but India still had him in the squad and what’s worse, played him ahead of Deepak Chahar (similar kind of bowler, but in his prime) in the matches that mattered. Bhuvi is an industrious, likeable cricketer but he just wasn’t able to put in the impactful performances of his past. India paid the price again for not accepting a reality of life and sport, that everyone has a shelf life.

Of late, Indian cricket has been too kind and I guess emotional about their senior incumbents, for there can’t be any cricketing logic to such selections. Chahar immediately proved the selectors wrong by getting the ball to move and getting early wickets. India ended up getting 10 wickets in the last ODI, their best bowling performance of the series.

Ashwin is another senior player that was in the squad and also in the playing XI for the first two ODIs and did exactly what he has been doing all along in white-ball cricket: not be the Ashwin of Tests. To be fair, there were a couple of dropped catches off his bowling, but what eventually played out was a replay of the last many years—Ashwin not giving himself the best chance to get wickets.

He bowled three overs of beautiful, flighted off-spin in the second one-dayer and I got excited, thinking, maybe the penny has finally dropped, before he went back to his carrom balls and flat non-off spin bowling, ending up with exactly the same kind of returns that he has been having in white-ball cricket.

When you keep playing senior players ignoring the current reality, you are also simultaneously giving yourself less time to keep backing the younger players. Because India lost the two one-dayers they could not play Venkatesh Iyer in the last because India were now desperate to win. Indian cricket is not in poor health but currently going through a phase of poor selections.

There is a good chance India will do what was needed at the start of both the Tests and ODI series, start looking for players in their prime or with potential and leave out the players whose skills are clearly blunted...but this comes at a cost doesn't it?

Smart selectors, captains and coaches must pre-empt and make changes to avoid impending crises rather than be forced to change after a crisis. The blotch remains if you react late.

Here is what I think India should do now.

The selectors need to spread the net and start looking for a couple of sturdy middle-order batters. With Pant established in the middle, they would be wise to look for the less flashy kind and more Kohli-like batter who can keep ticking off the ones and twos, hit the odd ball along the ground for 4s and in the end be not out on 130, winning games for India just like Kohli did.

Time also to go back to Kuldeep Yadav in 50-overs cricket, give youngsters the long rope.

Along with him, India need another pure wrist spinner as a backup for Chahal, just in case Chahal struggles to rediscover his lost mojo.

With Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Chahar, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur and Prasidh Krishna, there is enough seam talent available. Add two dependable middle-order batters and two wrist spinners to it and India will be a strong force in ODIs like they were before the 2019 World Cup.