Sify's Cricket World Cup Special

This amounts to having the sword of Damocles suspended over one’s head. And in a way makes both the player and the selection committee a laughing stock. The preliminary question would be to the committee — why pick the player when till the eleventh hour you have doubts about his fitness? And the secondary question would be to the player — are you hoping against hope to go to the World Cup with an injury and poor form?

Not more than 15 players can go on the trip, was what Dilip Vengsarkar said so glibly when explaining the exclusion of Mumbai’s Romesh Powar. Of course he sugar-coated the bitter pill for the deserving spinner by adding, "he was sorry" that the portly performer had to be left out.

The truth is that there have been many players who have missed out on various tours for miscellaneous reasons. Hanumant Singh, now gone from us, was not picked to tour Australia in 1967-68, despite the insistence of the then captain, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. But the selection committee refused to accede to the request, quoting a false medical report. His Rajasthan teammate, Parthasarathy Sharma missed the tour to Pakistan in 1978 when logic demanded that he be in the squad.

The late M. L. Jaisimha was told by a selector back in 1960-61 before the Test against Pakistan in Kanpur, "If you want to play you have to open the batting. And if you fail..." Jaisimha remarked many years later, "I wanted to show him and promised that the Pakistanis would get my wicket only over my dead body."

The records would show that Jaisimha was run out for 99 having batted for more than 500 minutes. It was one of the slowest innings in Indian cricket history but normally an adventurous batsman displayed what he was capable of otherwise.

There is a term known as fringe player, he is the one who completes the party as it were. Normally, there are two or even three on whose selection the committee is divided and compromises are struck.

Such players have been saved the sort of public humiliation that Pathan has been subjected to. Be humane Vengsarkar. At least, you could have kept it a cricket board secret.