Enough was enough....I wanted this to be said by someone not from TN.
Sunny doesn't mince words, thankfully.
http://www.dreamcricket.com/dreamcricket/news.hspl?nid=9940&ntid=4
Subramaniam Badrinath gets his chance. And he doesn't fail.
Sunil Gavaskar
Times they have certainly changed. Not so long ago any player
expressing disappointment at being left out of a team would probably
never ever be selected for his temerity in going public. This however
is a new age and a new era and unless you are 'in the face' as the
popular saying goes, you are not going to get noticed. There are other
benefits too apart from being seen and that can be in the endorsement
business as today's advertisers are looking for those already in the
public eye, be it for performance or controversy.
Subramaniam Badrinath is not one for controversy but for performance
and from what little has been seen of him at the domestic level as
also the Indian Premier League, he is thankfully no 'show boater'
either. There is not the slightest doubt that had he not expressed his
bafflement at being continually ignored for national selection and not
being told what he needs to do by any selector, he would not have been
picked as a replacement for Virender Sehwag. By saying what he did
immediately after the one-day team to Sri Lanka was announced he
brought attention to the selectors wandering minds that here was a
player who had done no wrong and needed to be given a chance, or as
Badri himself put it, given a chance to fail. Make no mistake, if he
had not given that interview the selectors would have turned to Dinesh
Karthik, or the perennial standby Mohammad Kaif, to take the place of
the injured Sehwag.
Luckily Badrinath is still on the right side of the 20s in a youth
obsessed country where performing at the under-19 level without any
corresponding deeds at the domestic level, can propel a player
straight to the national team. Yes, one can understand an under-19
quick bowler being pitch-forked into the international pit because he
has the strength, stamina and energy and is largely injury free, but
batsmen unless it is a once in a century player like Sachin Tendulkar,
need a lot more time to mature and be able to face the pressures and
tensions of international cricket. It is because of this awareness of
a national call up being round the corner after a performance at the
under-19 tournaments that one finds that ages are not always what the
certificates say at that level.
By speaking out Badrinath did force the selectors to pick him as a
replacement and in his first game he showed just why, by keeping his
cool along with captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and taking India to a win
after the earlier batsmen had tottered. Even here he was batting at
number 7 where batsmen hardly get the op****tunity to get big scores
and are dumped when they sacrifice their wickets in throwing their
bats in the slog overs. In dropping these lower order batsmen the
selectors point to their scores seldom taking into account the
cir***stances in which they had sacrificed their wickets.
Badrinath probably learnt from the fate that befell previous Tamil
Nadu players like S. Ramesh and S. Sriram who despite scoring
thousands of runs at the domestic level and then doing well in the
limited chances that they got at the international level, were dropped
on some pretext or the other. Why, Sriram was even dropped for the
next series after having been chosen Man of the Match in the previous
one-day series in Bangladesh.
Ramesh was never understood by the management and was seen as a goofy
character lost in his own world, never mind the fact that with the bat
he still delivered and also plucked some extraordinary catches in the
close-in position.
Past skippers including yours truly were often accused of favouring
players from their state or zone in the national team but no captain
is foolish enough to cut his own feet by going for players from his
state or zone and upsetting the balance of the team. The only reason
he goes for them is because he has seen more of them and knows how
they react to pressure than players from other zones he hasn't seen
enough of. In the past decade or so the captains seem keen to get an
image of being unbiased by not plumping for deserving players from
their state and zones for the national teams.
Badrinath's skipper for the Chennai Super Kings is Dhoni, and while he
has now said after Badrinath showed not just batting skills but good
temperament as well in his debut game that "he is a good player", did
he discuss him at the selection meeting? Of course captains have had
no vote in selection ever and are only co-opted to get their view on
combination etc. In trying to keep an image of being unbiased, are
captains not doing justice to players from their own states and zones?
Then the best thing to do is to follow the Australian method of
selection and not have the skipper as part of the selection group. By
all means seek his views as also that of the coach but let the
selectors then go into the meeting and pick the team. This way the
skipper is not involved in picking or dropping any player and can go
ahead and do the job with the players given to him.
Badrinath has got in but don't be surprised if at the first failure he
is left in the lurch while other failures get more chances to fail.
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