From their selection fiasco. Still no prominent batsmen to replace RD for the second Test. I am sure Cheeka wants to fill in half of Tamil Nadu players in the national team as replacement for every player. Any player gets injured or is dropped DK is in. Not many days back he was dropped and he hit 2 tons in a futile game (in sense that did not help his team win) to be back in the team again. Amazing. What an effect he has got over the selectors and MSD. The likes of Pandey, Parthiv Patel and others would be scratching their head in disgust to see DK being back in the team. Have we lost the quality players that the likes of DK or Saha are being played ?
DK is not going to score runs in international games. That’s a well proven point. Why not go beyond him and chose Pujara ? What else he needs to do ? DK has scored two tons in a game. Pujara has scored eons of them in last 2 years, just that he does not have a Srikanth like figure in the national selection committee, he is not able to break in, else he has done everything he could to get a chance. If Badrinath gets in for so called strong domestic performance, then Pujara is no lesser than him. For that matter even Kohli is more deserving than Karthik to be in the team. His strong performances in the last 3 ODI series as replacements are indicative of his claim.
Yuvraj made a strong name for himself in ODIs and then he came into the Test side, for that matter even Kaifu did the same. He was deserving more than DK. Only if somebody from North Zone was head of the selection committee.
Srikanth and DBV were part of the team that changed the fortunes of the Indian cricket 80s ownwards and they were expected to be level headed players or somebody with sane mind who would give more weightage to the form than the region of the player. Unfortunately that did not happen. If likes of Jaffer got umpteen opportunities in place of Sehwag in 2006-07, then the likes of DK, Dabri and Vijay (though he has proved his worth and would be too early to call his axe) have prospered under Srikanth. DBV was openly critical of Sehwag in 2006-07 when the batsman went through the slump and thus lost the race of captaincy to Dhoni.
It would be very unfortunate to see Laxman and Dravid not play in the Eden Gardens – the same ground which saw them do greatest rear guard action of Indian cricket in 2001. Its pretty unfortunate that Srikanth and his 4 other men are not ready to learn from the selection blunder they made for the first test and the result is out for everybody to see.