 Raw deal for Gambhir
The selectors have wielded the axe. Ever so unsubtly. Robin Uthappa must be thrilled, but not so, Gautam Gambhir. Here's a young man who has shown panache and guts in almost all the matches he has played for India, and he has been ruthlessly dropped, for failing to convert 20s and 30s into big scores. His catching ability has gone unnoticed. And the man who has replaced him has exactly two good scores against his name in the last 10 or so matches he has played. He was so inconsistent in the recent past that he was dropped from the South Zone eleven in the Deodhar Trophy.
Gambhir is in good company. He joins the ranks of some openers before him, tried and discarded without a fair trial. I mean Test openers like S Ramesh, Shiv Sunder Das, Connor Williams, Deep Dasgupta, Sanjay Bangar and Akash Chopra. During the Ganguly regime, it was customary for opening batsmen to come and go, even if they were relatively successful pairs of the likes of Ramesh-Das. At one point, the selectors zoomed in on Virender Sehwag as the constant factor and rotated his partner freely. In one-day cricket it was mostly Tendulkar, but in Test cricket, it was a minor procession. Gambhir proved himself in test cricket before Tendulkar's injury gave him a chance
to open in ODIs as well. He has not done too badly overall, figuring in a number of good starts, and averaging 25.56 in ODIs, with a strike rate of over 75, while he has a Test average of 36.
I am not suggesting that Sehwag be dropped for reasons of poor form, but certainly Kaif's recent run has earned him that kind of treatment. It seems unfair that a young batsman like Gambhir is axed to bring in a young replacement of unproven credentials, while others like Kaif continue to be given an extended run. Either the Indian team is going overboard with experimentation, or the old enemy, politics has reared its ugly head again. And, when India wrap up this series as the form book suggests rather strongly, I will insist that "All's not well that ends well".
V Ramnarayan
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