The ODI team

The team announced is

Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Karthik, Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Irfan Pathan, Praveen Kumar, RP Singh, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla

with Manoj Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan and Munaf Patel the standbys.

Taken in isolation, the selection is a pretty good one.

There are potentially 8 all rounders in the team, 4 openers and a plethora of middle order bats who can hit the long ball.

This aspect ( of playing power cricket and multi role players) is evident in the list of the stand by players too.

And that leads me to believe that India have finally embraced the concept of power cricket in the shorter version of the game.

And while this squad may not do too well in seaming and swinging conditions ( partly because of a lack of exposure and partly because of suspect techniques), the odds of such conditions cropping up in ODIs are next to 0 - because of the loss of revenues that entails.

Add to this the fact that most, if not all, of the selected players are pretty handy in the field and crisp between the wickets and the transformation of India's ODI cricket from power hitters up top, consolidators in the middle and power hitters at the bottom to power hitters up and down the batting line up, is complete.

Will all of the selected players be in the grand scheme of things for the WC 2011? May be not.

But the fact of the matter is that the selectors have finally decided to give the concept of power cricket a go and have done it in an environment where the pressure of succeeding is considerably diminished as compared to playing at home.

Now, the big picture - there seem to be a lot of people who are upset that Ganguly and Dravid did not make the cut. Hence the breast beating of considering "youth" versus "experience".

But, what is experience?

Is it the ability to quickly assess a situation and tailor one's game accordingly? Is it the ability to pace one's innings? Is it the ability to last 50 overs?

Bigger question is, does it matter?

Runs are the order of the day and the more the runs the better - the manner in which the runs are scored is trivial. And 300 runs in 40 overs for the loss of 10 wickets beats 260 runs for 5 wickets in 50.

And for the CB series, we have a team that can put the runs on the board - by constantly attacking.

And an offshoot of the constant attack motto is that it has a wearing effect on the opposition - bowlers lose their lines and lengths when constantly under the cosh, fielders feel the heat and most important of all, the loss of a wicket does not dim the tempo.

Do Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly fit the mold? Rahul Dravid was never a biffer of the ball to begin with. Coupled with a loss of form post the England tour and his life as an ODI player was over a while ago.

Ganguly can biff, but does he fit into the grand scheme of things?

He will almost certainly not play the 2011 WC. And given his limited ability to run between the wickets and a propensity to play sheet anchor (of late), he does not fit into the philosophy of power cricket.

Given all that, it has been a courageous move by the selectors to
a) embrace the philosophy of power cricket and
b) select a team that can deliver on that philosophy.