EVEN as the India’s national men’s cricket team is generally doing very well in recent weeks, a strong opinion is building up within the country’s cricketing community about the composition of the team for various formats. Veteran cricketers suspect that the current selectors are giving too much weightage to selecting all-rounders and are ignoring specialist bowlers. Though this feeling may not be universally expressed, doubts are rising here and there in the cricketing circles about the approach of the selectors to giving higher weightage to the all-rounders -- with an eye on the batting capabilities. The veterans are afraid that a lop-sided composition would not take India to winning all the games. They insist that there should be enough numbers of specialist bowlers in the national side for a healthier balance and finer prescription to winning, particularly the Test version. Most veterans insist upon the stability and balance of the composition, which the all-rounders tend to disturb.

 

Most veterans believe that batsmen do have their importance in the team, but it is bowlers that actually help in winning. Bowling must have its own sting that can penetrate through any batting walls. ‘Wickets win matches’, they insist. Veterans such as Ravichandran Ashwin agrees that flexibility in choice is important, but Test cricket fundamentally requires wicket-taking specialist bowlers who can be absolute match-winners. Veterans such as Krishnamachari Srikkanth insist that packing the side with medium-tier all-rounders who are expected to bowl their quota of overs may backfire on the team. It must be noted that the changing approach of the selectors might have been caused due to the demands of smaller formats of the game where scoring runs is the top-most priority. On several occasions, Indian selectors have opted for five specialist batsmen, three all-rounders and three specialist bowlers. This combination has brought success to the Indian teams on countless occasions, all right.

 

It is also equally true that packing the side with good numbers of all-rounders gives the team with much-needed batting depth, flexibility. The flip side is that with all-rounders taking bowling-load, the possibility of what experts call ‘run-leakage’ cannot be ruled out. Those mistakes often prove costly in the long run, experts argue. Specialist-heavy sides, too, have their own disadvantages, they agree. Yet, they throw their weight in favour of a good-enough number of specialist bowlers to ensure that the team can handle the big scoring rival team’s pressure with greater ease. They quote the global experience to support their case for a more balanced composition of the team. It is obvious that good and bad arguments are available on both sides of the divide. Yet, seeing how the national teams have performed in the last some time, the balance appears tilted in favour of a more specialist-heavy side especially for the longest format of the game. The selectors, thus, have a good deal of weighing of options to be done before they finalise any standard composition for the national teams. Obviously, the formats will be the greater deciding factors.