Back to the Drawing Board or Square One

After coming a cropper against spinners who normally struggle to find a regular place in the New Zealand Test squad, the media-hyped Indian batting line-up flopped against pace barring a few exceptions in Australia. The abrupt retirement and return home mid-tour by Ravichandran Ashwin and Rohit Sharma getting dropped (or whatever you may like to call it) from the playing XI in the last Test, rounds up the story. To sum it up in two lines - you cannot entrust to a failed politician the reins of India's cricket team, and the star system has to give way to actually deserving players if Test cricket in India has to survive, or shall we be kinder - go forward. Not only was not Rohit firing, but also others like Kohli and Gill were struggling, when Rohit chose to 'stand down', why no opportunity was given to Sarfaraz or Easwaran?

The batting returns of Rohit and Kohli are diminishing, more so in the last few months. They cannot play spin at home or pace abroad. That should be enough to leave them out of the Test squad for now. Let them fight their way back by playing domestic or county cricket. A youngster like Gill has been given too long a rope. K L Rahul too has to improve from the spate of ordinary returns both at home and abroad. The selectors have two options - give discarded seniors like Pujara, Rahane, Vihari and Iyer another opportunity or give ample opportunities to the likes of Sarfaraz, Patidar and Paddikkal, blooded into the Test squad last year and simply forgotten it seems. Easwaran, Sai Sudarshan and Ruturaj could be other viable options. If Rohit and Kohli have to fail in England in six months' time, then why not repose trust in the youngsters?

That Gautam Gambhir has been a total disaster is a no-brainer. His stubbornness and meddling into team selection has spoiled the team environment. India carried an 18-member jumbo squad to Australia, with Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy clearly Gambhir's favourites, picked purely on their IPL exploits. The Test squad was named when India was on the verge of losing the second Test to New Zealand. A 19th member (Devdutt Paddikkal) was added to the squad for an absent Rohit Sharma and even played the first Test at Perth. Three fast bowlers - Mukesh Kumar (who should have been in the original squad), Yash Dayal and Khaleel Ahmad (later replaced due to injury by Navdeep Saini) were with the squad till the first Test as reserve bowlers! So India had a total of 22 players in Australia at the start of the tour. This happened at a time when the domestic season is in progress. Hence most of the players were mere travellers, missing in action. Sarfaraz Khan, who had scored 150 at Bengaluru against New Zealand took the field just once during the India vs Australian PM's XI match at Canberra, as a substitute wicket-keeper. His batting stint was crowned with a golden duck. So he kept posting pictures on social media of the Australian cities. When he had debuted, after being ignored for three years, in February 2024 against England, and impressed with three half-centuries, the newspapers and social media were full of his struggles and his father's. We saw a similar script play out as IPL star Nitish Kumar Reddy hit 40s till he ground out a brilliant hundred in a losing cause at Melbourne. Stories of his father's sacrifice and struggles were all around the media space. Just like Sarfaraz, Nitish faces the possibility of losing his place after three poor returns.

When Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan were denied central contracts by the BCCI last year for skipping domestic cricket, there was a lot of talk of all players being forced to play in the Ranji and Duleep Trophy. But rules were different for the seniors. Obviously there has been no difference in their performance, thanks to the neglect of the basics. Kohli has left Delhi for good for Mumbai, and he could be leaving India soon to settle down in England. There was a suggestion by one of the journalists at the press conference after India lost the Sydney Test that the Test players should play Ranji Trophy matches, the next round of which begins on 23rd January 2025. Gautam Gambhir skirted the issue deftly like a (failed) politician. 

The Australian and English teams are excellent examples of the importance that their international stars give to domestic cricket. The established players play for their domestic teams at the start of the season. Players like Scott Boland and Beau Webster had to grid hard for 10 years in the Sheffield Shield before getting an opportunity to play for Australia. Even the structure of domestic cricket is quite robust in Australia. There are only 6 state teams that compete in the Sheffield Shield, with each team playing the other twice - once at the start and once at the end of the season. So a domestic cricketer gets only 10 first-class matches in a season. In contrast we have 38 teams in the Ranji Trophy with some very weak city-based teams. The zonal Duleep Trophy has been badly altered over the years. It would be an excellent idea to begin the domestic season with one round of Duleep Trophy matches, ensuring the availability of all the top Test contenders. This will also enhance the level of domestic cricket with the best competing against each other. Unfortunately, we have IPL in the hot and humid months of April and May as the only domestic contest in which all the top stars compete. Naturally, the top performers in IPL get a chance to play for the country in all formats. Not surprisingly, we are winning only in T20 internationals these days.  

The team management and the selectors cannot have two separate yardsticks for two sets of players - the haves (stars) and have-nots. But going by the statements made by Rohit and Gambhir, there would be no visible change by the time the team is picked for the England tour. The white-ball Champions' Trophy followed by IPL is coming up. Rohit and Kohli could hit some form, even though they are well past their prime, and all shall be forgotten for good (or worse).