...and its chances in the World Cup.
Why the selectors had to delay the announcement of the team to the West Indies until today is beyond comprehension, especially since they had zeroed on the team around the 3rd ODI against the West Indies.
The moment Irfan Pathan and Yuvraj Singh were selected to play against the Sri Lankans and continued to be retained by the team in spite of their "niggles", they were assured a passage to the Carib.
In Sehwag's case, the very fact that he played the 3rd test at Cape Town despite being out of form and in spite of being the lesser spinner compared to Harbhajan sealed the deal for him. I had written earlier that the selectors are fooling nobody by "dropping" Sehwag as he would be a shoo-in to play Sri Lanka. True to form, the selectors obliged.
I think that in trying to be all things to all people, the Team Management ( read Dravid and Chappell) lost the plot. And this happened around the time India went to Pakistan in 2006.
The intent was laudable - trying to set in motion a bunch of processes that will help the team perform better collectively and at the same time allow for players within the team to better their skills.
That there were flaws in the team was apparent even when India was on a roll against all comers at home. ( during the 17 win streak).
The fact that they lost at Jamshedpur and Hyderabad ( bouncy wickets) and Kolkata( green top) and would have lost at Mumbai against South Africa but for the catches spilled indicated an inability to adjust to conditions outside of the straight and narrow ( read patta wickets).
Selecting Saurav Ganguly for the Pakistan trip basically set into motion a sequence of events that has lead up to the mess we find ourselves in today.
The Ganguly selection undid all the effort of placing processes before personalities. And just like that, it was about personalities and not processes.
Experiments like changing the batting order became personality centric instead of process centric, players were tried and discarded and tried again and discarded again. Vide using Pathan at 3 while completely jettisoning the Dhoni option at the same position. Vide Md. Kaif being shunted up and down the order while Yuvraj Singh retained his place at 4 or 5. Vide non specialist fielders taking up specialist positions ( more so in tests that ODIs, but hey, it all counts). Vide the persistence with some players ( read Raina) at the expense of others ( read Kaif).
Things came to a boil in the West Indies where the Indians could not adjust to the bounce and pace of the wickets and just like that, the victor had become the vanquished.
It has been a free fall from then on.
People centric and people specific processes meant that if the people failed, the process failed. To arrest the slide, more processes were introduced which may or may not have been tailored to the individual concerned.
This led to greater insecurity within the team, which in turn added to process failure, which in turn led to patchwork jobs to quick fix what was broken - which increased the insecurities.
Lack of viable communication lines between the think tank and the rest of the team may have also contributed to the free fall.
A nation, polarized as it was by the Ganguly-Chappell spat, was quick to take sides and this added to the doom and gloom.
What had worked for India during its winning run is the fact that the team was quick to identify and seize the initiative during crunch moments of the game.
Ever since the second ODI against the West Indies in the West Indies, the team collectively lost that ability to identify key moments in the game ( the last league game against Australia in Malaysia and the third ODI against SA being the most glaring examples ).
This, coupled with a collective form slump and a tendency to hit one's way back to form, only made things worse.
It could all have been different if the man at the helm had shown a little more enterprise.
Rahul Dravid is India's best bat, and arguably its greatest #3. In the absence of Tendulkar and Ganguly, the onus was on him to lead from the front. And he had shown glimpses of enterprise, in the period between late 2005 and early 2006 ( vide his use of powerplays and the super sub).
I get the sense that Dravid, the Captain, is temperamentally more suited to the longer form of the game only because it gives him the time and the space to express himself.
In the shortened form of the game, I feel he is quite out of his depth. he operates as if he has done the sums in his mind beforehand, and irrespective of the state of the game, is content to lead by the numbers.
Which is great when the team operates on auto pilot, but not so flash when things are going south.
What is noticable in the period between the last visit to the West Indies and the current scheduled vsit has done is that it has made Rahul more rigid in his approach to ODI captaincy. Is it because of the pressures of the job or his inherent nature is a matter conjecture.
But that rigidity of thought has led to a rigidity in action and that brings us to today and the team selection.
Look at the team going to the West Indies. Three key members of the side ( Sehwag, Yuvraj and Irfan) have no form to speak of, Yuvraj and Irfan are crocked, Sreesanth is a borderline selection, the two spinners have become containing bowlers rather than wicket taking options.
The ground fielding is weak, and while the team can boast of a formidable batting line up on paper,the team is collectively in pre season form.
They still cannot adapt to changing situations, partly because of inertia and partly ennui.
The captain expects the team to be carried by 7-8 key members, hardly the attitude to take to the Worlds biggest stage.
On the flip side, Zaheer, Munaf and Agarkar are firing. So are Sachin and Ganguly. Dravid can bat himself back to form, and there are two more ODIs to play against SL.
At the end of the day, the Dravid-Chappell legacy hinges upon the teams performance in the World Cup. Better the effort of the JohnWright-Saurav Ganguly dispensation and they will become heroes for life ( and beyond).
Anything less and it will mean curtains to their current roles.
Personally,the negatives outweigh the positives and it will take a superhuman effort from the team collectively to get past the Super 8's.
