In the bad old days in Indian cricket, there were two things cricketers dreaded on the eve of a series/tour: selectors being nepotistic or getting unexpectedly injured when in very good form.
The first aspect, I’d like to believe, doesn’t have much currency these days. Sure, team selection remains a contentious issue even now. But accusations of bias in selection have whittled down substantially.
This is largely because there has been a profusion of rich talent in Indian cricket in recent years. The spread of cricket maps virtually the entire country, and players now emerge not only from traditional centres, but also from the smallest cities and remotest areas.
After India won the inaugural T20 World Championship in 2007, and the humungous success thereafter of the IPL, cricket has taken an even stronger hold over the national psyche. The supply of players from all corners of the country is in abundance.
Consequently, selecting teams has become a challenge for the selectors.
But this also means greater jostling for places. For instance, only Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah can be said to be certainties in all three formats of the game.
So, while there is intense debate on the choice of players every time the Indian team is chosen, it is hardly based on the malafide intent of selectors as would be the case on the bad old days. Mohinder Amarnath’s famous caustic admonition when he was dropped in 1989, that ‘selectors are jokers’, does not really hold true now.
Today, the greater debate is not about favouritism, rather about which player suits a particular position best. This might suggest that swapping players would be easy or without great peril. But such premise does not contend with team and dressing room dynamics and strategies.
A lot of time and effort is invested in getting the balance and composition of the team, and the chemistry between players right, to ensure consistently good results. This is where injury to settled players in a team can be a serious setback.
Misfortune has fallen on Shikhar Dhawan without respite in the past 6-7 months. During the World Cup last year, he fractured his hand while scoring a century against Australia and had to miss not only the rest of the tournament, but quite a few matches thereafter. He lost his Test place to Rohit Sharma who has shown such wondrous form after being promoted in the order that it would be impossible to dislodge him now. This meant that Dhawan, otherwise a regular fixture in all three formats, had to contend now with only T20s and ODIs.
He made a successful return to both these formats against West Indies and Australia in the home season and was virtually on the flight to New Zealand with the Indian team earlier this week when he fell on his shoulder in the final ODI against the Aussies and hurt himself so badly that he was forced to stay at home.
Dhawan and Rohit make for a splendid left-right opening combination. A great deal of India’s batting tactics would revolve around this fact. Also, the two have worked splendidly as partners over a period of time that gives them mutual confidence.
This has value in something as basic as running between wickets. Given their seniority, they also understand match situations extremely well. Losing Dhawan at such a late stage disrupts the plans and tactics of the Indian team as it goes straightaway into the T20 series.
While Dhawan misses the first leg of the New Zealand tour where India play 5 T20s and 3 ODIs, Ishant Sharma, who was a certainty for the 2 Test matches which follow, injured his ankle in a Ranji Trophy match against Vidarbha and seems unlikely to recover in time. Ishant, who got a second wind 2-3 years back, is a seasoned hand whose experience and strike power now makes him the bulwark of the fast bowling attack. With Bumrah and Shami he forms a troika that is currently rated the most deadly in the world.
While there is a plethora of fast bowlers to choose from currently, Ishant’s absence would rob the team of not only its most capped player, but also compel a revision in strategies on how to bowl the Kiwis out twice to win a match. Both the T20s and Test series are vital on this tour of New Zealand, the former as preparation for the World Championship to be played in October this year, and the latter for firming up a place in the World Test Championship final scheduled for mid-2021.
Injuries to key players compels captain Kohli and chief coach Ravi Shastri to make revisions in game plans urgently. The handicap here is of time since injuries to both Dhawan and Ishant happened just before the tour started.
Some relief, of course, comes from the fact that replacement talent is also very good. This could be the opportunity youngsters replacing Dhawan (Sanju Samson and Prithvi Shaw) and Ishant (yet to be announced) were seeking.
The next few weeks should show how well the team has adjusted and coped with the challenge.
The writer is a senior journalist who has been writing on the sport for over 40 years.
