Challengers Update : Gains and Losses Audit

Challengers trophy is done with.

India Blues won the final emphatically by 140 runs.  Yuvraj Singh did not shine with the bat, captaincy skills were not on testing fireburner. Few names have been come up as potential selections for ODIs. But overall picture looks gloomy.

Challengers were a good option for out of favor players to make in to the reckoning again.  A few of them were:

1.  Irfan Pathan
2. Yusuf Pathan
3. Robin Uthapps
4. RP Singh
5. Piyush Chawla

And a point to prove for

1. Bosseshwar
2. Badrinath

Out of the first 5, IP did not get a single game. Poor he.

Robin Uthappa ended on the poor side as loser. RP Singh got wickets but on inconsistent basis. There is not quite an opening in the pacers list for the ODIs. PK, Zak, Ishant, Nehra and Sreesanth should be the top 5 from whom the top 3 would be picked for a game.

Piyush Chawla has a tough competition for leg spin ? Not quite. No leg spinner n the fray. Amit Mishra is not quite in the fray for the ODI slot. So 3 spinners who make the cut most of the times are Harbhajan, Ojha and to an extent Ashvin. All 3 are off spinners. More often than not the 5th bowler is Sir Ravider Sobers Jadeja so there is very little scope for Chawla to sneak in.

Yusuf Pathan was as usual inconsistent. So he is stuck off.

Bosseshwar was again his usual self. Did nto make runs, dropped catches and in short made a good case to ask himself to be left out to act in regional filims.

Badrinath, never an ODI player, never he would be.

What about the # 7 spot ? It remained well in illusion once again.   Sir Jadeja flopped, did not make runs and take wickts on consistent basis. So if Dhoni persists with him would be a sham.

Expect more jadeja bashing and jokes on blogs and twitter.

So who stood out :

Consistent basis only Rahane was the one who carried great Irani form to this tourney and except the finals he was a good prospect to be given a look in.

Most of the slots for Indian team are booked :

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are taken up.

ST, VS, GG, YS, SR, MS in the order.

Reserves batsmen: Kohli, ? , ?

Spinners : Bhajan, Ojha, Ashvin?

Pacers: Zak, Ishant, Nehra, Praveen, Sreesanth?

May be 5 pacers are one too many for Indian conditions. So one pacer can be replaced by an extra batsman in reserve. So who is he going to be ? Rahane should be one of them.

Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa should now be considered close cases.

On the exteriors the gains out of the Challengers does not stand to be too many. If there is going to be one batsman to be picked, on the current form Vijay would sneak in. What would he do as opener when team already has 3 of them?

Tough questions but the selection panel is too good to answer them. Srikanth would push some extra characters from Tamil Nadu C team in the reserve slots. He has to find new incumbents to fill up those slots as Dick Karthik is proved useless.