Harsha Bhogle recently wrote an article in the Indian Express wherein he argued that there were (realistically) only two batsmen who could vie for the last batting spot in India's World Cup roster, a position currently occupied by Dinesh Mongia.
He wrote: Match it with your own but I had Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Anil Kumble, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra. That is seven batsmen, a wicket keeper and ten bowlers. It means there are a few options going around with the bowlers but we have very few degrees of freedom with the batsmen.
He then ends on this note (which, as my regular readers will know, I concur with thoroughly): For India to be serious World Cup contenders they need runs and I’m afraid by the look of it they will have to hope that these very batsmen do it for them by playing the way they did 12 months ago. The only player who can complete that short list, as of now, will therefore have to be VVS Laxman.
But I doubt that the selectors will go that way. I write this blog the evening after India lost a game to West Indies because no one in the much-vaunted batting line-up withstood the tight bowling they came up against. The current incumbents for the middle-order batting spots are Raina, Kaif and Mongia (in that pecking order, it appears). The biggest negative against Laxman is his perceived weakness as a fielder. But since Dravid has become skipper, he almost always operates with a slip. Surely Laxman, one of the best Indian second slip fielder ever, can cover that slot that people like Sehwag and Tendulkar have filled in the recent past.
A point that I have been trying to make, in vain, was lucidly pointed out by Dileep Premachandran of Cricinfo, while delivering his verdict on the India-WI match: The cameo is something that comes naturally to Suresh Raina as well these days. If he wasn't making a run, you could just write it off as bad form, or bad luck. But when a batsman manages to get a start, and then throws it away in a variety of ways, it reveals a deeper malaise (. . .) A batsman of the calibre of VVS Laxman has been excluded on the grounds that his fielding isn't up to scratch, but when those that replace him aren't worth more than 15 or 20 runs with the bat, it makes you wonder about the wisdom of sidelining a man who has one-day hundreds against Australia and Pakistan.
Will common sense prevail or will Laxman once again have to bear the ignominy of being excluded from the World Cup?
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