Selection of India's team for ODI series against England hardly inspires

Never change a winning combination, the saying goes. Despite losing the one-day international series 1-2 to Pakistan with the Indian opening and middle-order batting collapsing in all the three games, Team India’s selectors made just one change in the squad for the ODI series against England, commencing at Rajkot this Friday. The performance of the two openers, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, was way below par, as was the batting of the middle order. It was expected that both the openers and also Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma would be dropped for the ODI series against England. However, the only change was the replacement of Sehwag with Cheteshwar Pujara, India’s top scorer in the Test series against England.

Selection committees are judged by whom they drop and by whom they don’t. Hence, questions will inevitably be asked why only Sehwag was axed and why Yuvraj and Sharma were not replaced. Sharma was reportedly not dropped since his most logical replacement Manoj Tiwary was injured. However, that doesn’t quite wash, since there are other players like Ambati Rayudu who have a better temperament when it comes to raising their game for the big occasion. Part of the problem of India’s cricket selection is that the same players tend to be chosen for Tests and ODIs when the formats are completely different. For the ODI series, England has replaced at least six players who played a key role in winning the Test series 2-1 in India — the batsmen Nick Compton and Jonathan Trott, the wicketkeeper Matt Prior, the fast bowler James Anderson and both the spinners Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar whose performance was far superior to that of their Indian counterparts. India’s selectors appear timid by contrast when it comes to building an ODI team for the future.