On 28 September 2008, Kris Srikkanth, the former India opener, was appointed as head of India’s first-ever paid national selection committee. It was a much-heralded coming of the professional era of Indian cricket — the selectors were to be paid Rs 25 lakh per year and not occupy just honorary positions.
As such the selectors were to be responsible for planning ahead, they were supposed to have a vision for the future, to groom talent to take over from the veterans. Instead, we’ve seen a general dumbing down of selection process.
Ad hoc selections such as Piyush Chawla being selected for the World Cup, RP Singh being sent to England despite being half-fit or the appearance of Vinay Kumar and Abhimanyu Mithun as the fourth and fifth best seamers in the country for the vital tour of Australia despite their struggles in domestic cricket have taken the sheen of the World Cup triumph, which happened just last year.
What is Srikkanth planning for? Does he have a vision? Reuters
So is there something that happened between the World Cup triumph and now which caused the selectors to take leave of their senses? Kiran More, former chairman of the selection committee, believes that the absence of cold logic in their decisions is damning.
“People ask what has happened. And I say precisely. Nothing has happened because nothing has been planned,” said More while speaking to Firstpost. “After the England tour, the selection committee should have seen that there was no competition in the squad for places. They should have created some panic there. They needed to have a word with the seniors and tell them they need to produce results. But did they?”
Instead what we did see was that the likes of Abhinav Mukund were dropped despite a very decent showing. The whole team failed so why did the axe fall on the least experienced member? Ajinkya Rahane did pretty well in the ODIs too but he too hasn’t played a Test match.
“The West Indies tour was a chance to try our new players. Instead, we stuck to the old guns and barely managed to beat the West Indies. But for a century from R Ashwin, we might even have struggled against the West Indies. What more warning did they want?” asked More. “We are too laid back and have paid the price for that.”
Not long ago, it seemed as if India had figured out the way to channel young talent into the senior level. Many of India’s young stars – Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Parthiv Patel, Irfan Pathan, Robin Uthappa, RP Singh, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli… made it through the system. But then the system itself was junked.
But it’s hard to point out one big batsman who has emerged for India in the last five years. There are some fast bowlers who have come up but the spin cupboard remains bare.
“The selectors keep saying that they are feeling bad. But just feeling bad isn’t going to help. They need to start reacting, they need to take tough decisions. Because at the end of the day, if you don’t take decisions, you will be taken for granted,” said More. “And that’s what seems to be happening.”
“There was an easy way out. After England, they needed to take the seniors aside and ask them where they stand. They needed to explain that youngsters need to be blooded. At the end of the day, Sachin, Rahul, VVS are all very good guys, they would understand. They won’t bite. So what is Srikkanth afraid of and why is he giving silly excuses?”
The need of the hour is to have a plan. It won’t help to just throw out all the seniors. The plan as More recommends goes like this:
1. Get the Talent Research and Development Wing up and running again. There are around 600 matches (seniors and juniors combined) that happen every year in India and only 10 selectors. We need more scouts – that’s how the likes of Dhoni were found.
2. Let performance be the sole criteria. Give players a time limit – fail for 10 matches and it won’t matter how much experience you have, you will be dropped.
3. Revamp the Ranji Trophy. You can’t have a plate team get direct entry into the Elite knock-out round. That is just plain stupid. The reason the team is in plate is because it is just not good enough. It’s almost like a team from the first division becomes champions of the Premier League. Ever heard of that?
4. Plan for the future and the present will take care for itself. What is Srikkanth planning for? Does he have a vision?
5. And make sure there is competition for slots. If hard decisions have to be taken: So be it. There is a need for young cricketers and any time we have a dead rubber or a series against a weaker team like Zimbabwe or Bangladesh, they must be given a go.