Indian Cricket's first test of invincibility?

Six weeks after Mahendra Singh Dhoni lifted the ICC Cricket World Cup in Mumbai, the Indian Cricket selectors met up for the first time to pick the squad for the ODI leg in the full Caribbean tour the Champions would embark on in the first week of June.

The final sixteen in the touring party included – Gautam Gambhir (captain), Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel (wk), Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, S Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, R Ashwin, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Vinay Kumar, Yusuf Pathan, Amit Mishra, Wriddhiman Saha (wk).

This tour will be the first real test of sorts for the selectors, the players, the viewers and more importantly, India as a champion cricket country.

The selectors have made some crucial decisions to provide rest to senior and important Indian stars by the likes of MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan. From the World Cup winning squad, both Piyush Chawla and Sreesanth have got the cut too! Five replacements and with Gautam Gambhir being vested with the role of Indian captain means that the selectors have gone gallant with the squad selection and also to an extent, learnt the importance of resting and rotating players.

Such a selection is absolutely inconceivable a decade ago. When teams like Australia, had the chance of rotating and resting players, Indian selectors had a smattering of good players in the reserve to rotate. But the other side of the story is that, cricket then was hardly as demanding as it is today.

This is the first ODI series for the Indian cricket team since the World Cup win. So, it becomes that much significant for the selectors to pick the best possible team. Now that, they have gone with replacements, it adumbrates that they’re looking forward for the team to evolve as a whole and in addition, lay trust and confidence in the players they have picked to do the job. If the team disappoints at Caribbean, be rest assured about who the media will make the villain for the result.

In more than one way, the rotation policy is a blessing for the players who have spent most of the time on the fringes of Indian selection. For players like Subramaniam Badrinath and Parthiv Patel who on a hot fine day, will find it really hard to get into the Indian middle order or in Parthiv’s case, replace Dhoni, this one-day series will be yet another chance to put their case forward in the best way possible!

Their biggest fortune comes up only when the players from the main line up, either get injured or in a positive frame, be rested and rotated. If not for such a chance, a certain Rohit Sharma or Vinay Kumar, who has been in the fray since 2006, will not get their second life to prove their mettle against a top international team, away from home. Importantly, most of these players who will board the flight to West Indies truly deserve this chance to play for India. It is just that they have been denied the chance by a group of cricketers, who belong to the golden generation of Indian cricket. In this new squad, apart from producing impressive individual performances, the Indian stars would also have to carry forward the good things Dhoni and his men did during the World Cup. A defeat in West Indies will not at all be good for the champions. With the amount of cricket that India has played in the last year, and the amount of cricket that India is waiting to play in the next six months, it is important for the selectors to have as big a pool as possible, to pick players from. That is an ideal scenario.

For players like Subramaniam Badrinath and Parthiv Patel who on a hot fine day, will find it really hard to get into the Indian middle order or in Parthiv’s case, replace Dhoni, this one-day series will be yet another chance to put their case forward in the best way possible!

Situations like what Virender Sehwag is facing right now, is bound to happen anytime in international cricket, and with the quantity of cricket, teams play these days, the risk of getting injured seriously, goes a notch higher. With a bigger pool, replacements can always be sought out. You might not get another Sehwag to fill in Sehwag’s spot, but at least there will be more than a half-decent replacement.

The competition for places in the Indian team is at an all time high. Only two of the top five run getters this Ranji season have found a place in this ODI squad, a squad that doesn’t feature Sehwag, Tendulkar and Dhoni. None of the top five wicket-takers this season are part of this ODI squad. The likes of Pankaj Singh and Deepak Chahar have particularly been very impressive this season. With a tour of England and Australia in the horizon, a good combination of swing and fast bowlers is what the selectors would look out for.

The falling TRP ratings every week in Indian Premier League is a telling factor of how knackered an average Indian cricket viewer is. There has been way too much cricket sold on TV than ever before. This season, 2011-12 will easily be the biggest year in Indian cricket if both quantity and quality are taken into consideration. A World Cup win is already done and dusted. IPL is almost in its final leg. The full tour to Caribbean will be followed by England and Australian tours with India hosting a couple of countries between these two tours abroad. Half-way through IPL, the viewers have started to pick and choose the matches they would prefer to watch. With the West Indies tour starting off in just a week’s time and oddly set time zone differences would mean that the most ardent of the Indian cricket follower, might prefer to take a break!

This, in effect, will also be a test for the fan, who must have spent over 100 hours of Indian cricket already, this year.

The cynical way of thinking about this selection and this first step since the World Cup glory, is to say that after all this team is touring a fallen group of islands where cricket is no more the most prominent and popular sport, islands who are striving for separate representation in the world stage, a group of islands who’ve registered their first test win over two years!

On a brighter note this Indian team is slowly maturing into a serious champion side. There are still noticeable chinks in the armory, especially with the fast bowlers. However, the most promising change is India’s ability to move on without Sachin Tendulkar – the batsman. For a major part of the year in the lead up to the World Cup, India played ODIs without Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. This tour will provide ample opportunities for young batsmen to show that they can carry forward the legacy of India’s great batting history.

In this new squad, apart from producing impressive individual performances, the Indian stars would also have to carry forward the good things Dhoni and his men did during the World Cup.

This line up, sans Sehwag, Tendulkar and Dhoni still look as formidable as any batting unit in this world and on any given day, have all the ability to score loads of runs against top class bowling units in testing conditions. This is one of the most important features of top sporting units around the world. They keep winning consistently, even without some of the most important individuals on their side.

These are signs of Indian cricket moving towards that elusive zone of invincibility and mercilessness, that once West Indies were in and later the magnificent Aussies thrived in for a long time. Being World Test Champions and now being crowned the World One-Day Champions, India have accomplished the grandeur they yearned for a long time. Now that they have reached the top, the only way is downhill. But, champions know how to prolong their stay on top, until someone truly better comes and pushes them down!

This is certainly Indian cricket’s first test towards their quest to extend their stay on top. The longer the stay is, the more the ruthless, the more the forceful, the more the fearful and more the invincible they would become.