India head to the West Indies

After a forgettable performance in the World T20 championships in England, for which everything from fatigue to poor batting and fielding performances were attributed as reasons, India will now head to the carribean to play an insignificant one day series comprising 4 matches.

While the need for a carribean tour without test matches and T20 Internationals (which are unarguably the flavour of the day) can be debated upon, the Indian selectors have given us another topic to debate upon and put the former debate to rest in the process.

Ashish Nehra has been included in the Indian squad. He marks his return to this Indian team after playing his last game in 2006.

It is beyond me (and every Indian cricket fan, I assume) as to why Nehra has been conscripted. Nehra had a reasonably successful beginning to IPL 2009 and finished the tournament with a couple of poor games. It is this inconsistency that has always defined his game and there haven’t been any indications that Nehra has grown to be any consistent.

It looks like the selectors wanted to replace Zaheer with a left armer and Nehra, with his experience of playing in West Indian conditions, was a suitable replacement.

However, his form in domestic competitions for Delhi hasn’t been any impressive and I don’t remember having read any exceptional bowling performance from him in the recent past. Also, considering that he was bowling well in the pacer-friendly South African conditions doesn’t justify his automatic selection to a tour of West Indies. We have already seen how the purple cap winner of IPL 2009 (R.P. Singh) could not make it to the final XI of the World T20 championships after a couple of forgettable warm-up games.

The selection of Nehra shows that a complete reshuffle to the selection committee and the introduction of paid selectors has changed nothing about the way selections are administered in India.

Murali Vijay’s selection to the one day squad too reeks of parochialism on the part of Srikkanth to give players from Tamilnadu a representation in this Indian team. While Tamilnadu has historically been under-represented and needed a look in, the selection of Murali Vijay is not the way to address it.