Selectors have their task cut out

It's all fine for the pitches and grounds committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to recommend that fast and bouncy tracks in India are the panacea for the national team to do well in matches abroad. According to K Srikkanth, the former Indian captain who heads the committee, the recommendation covers not only matches against foreign teams visiting the country but also domestic cricket.

But no evidence of any change along these lines has been seen as far as the Deodhar Trophy tournament is concerned. It has been the same old story. Flat tracks, totally batsman oriented. Just runs, runs and more runs. Hundreds galore. Century stands and even a double century partnership. Teams chasing 300 plus and falling just short. Teams chasing 300 plus targets successfully - and with almost ten overs to spare. Only one match in six where the ball has dominated.

The selectors are really in a quandary under the circumstances. They can't be expected to totally ignore such scores. But then they also know that these are little more than statistical landmarks. The scores are inflated by the kind of flat wickets that these matches are played on. The same batsmen, who look so commanding at home, come a cropper when they are asked to play on the very different wickets abroad.

It's been the same story with the Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy competitions where the bat's dominance has been pronounced. Hundreds galore, some double hundreds and even a triple hundred have been the order of the day. The question is how much value should the selectors give to such knocks. In the past, we have had batsmen like Vikram Rathour, Sujith Somasundar, Pankaj Dharmani and Gagan Khoda run up big scores around the domestic circuit and force themselves into the national side only to fail miserably when confronted by strong international opposition - even at home, let alone abroad. Even in the present team, the selection of players like Sameer Dighe, Vijay Bhardwaj, Jacob Martin and Hrishikesh Kanitkar was based on their performances around the domestic circuit. Even in the near future, the question is how seriously must the selectors consider the cases of heavy scorers in the various national level competitions - batsmen like Rajiv Nayyar, Sitanshu Kotak, J Arun Kumar and Virender Sewag.

With the pitches so heavily loaded in favour of the batsmen, the other point the selectors will have to keep in mind is how they should consider the performances of the bowlers. Naturally enough, the bowlers' lot is one to be envied and not many of them have been able to cover themselves with glory - even statistically. Under the circumstances, the bowling cupboard is getting to be increasingly bare. At least a few international class batsmen have been discovered over the last couple of years but the bowling attack for some years now has revolved around Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad and Anil Kumble. Bowlers like Ajit Agarkar, Sunil Joshi, Nikhil Chopra, Robin Singh, Debasish Mohanty and Thiru Kumaran have not really made the Test grade.

So the selectors really have their task cut out when picking the side for the Test series and the one day games against South Africa next month. And the debacle of the Indian team `Down Under' has not made things any easier for them. Perhaps they will take the safe course, turn their back on the policy of encouraging youth and recall Md Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Vinod Kambli, all of whom incidentally are doing well around the domestic circuit. It may be a retrograde for some, but then the selectors would seem to have a Hobsons choice.