India v/s New Zealand: Rope gets longer for Rohit Sharma

Do you like surprises? If yes, then you will be disappointed with this piece of news. The Sandeep Patil-led Indian selection committee, in its last meeting of their tenure, delivered a team for the three-Test series against New Zealand along the expected lines.

The news is Rohit Sharma continues to ride the waves along with the Indian team hanging on to the long rope thrown to him by the generous selectors. Many talented cricketers have not even been fraction as lucky as the Mumbai batsman.

The selectors just chose to prune the squad that toured West Indies recently from 17 to 15 for the home series. They dropped seam bowling all-rounder Stuart Binny and the promising Mumbai fast bowler Shardul Thakur. That's it.

The rest of the squad remains the same.

However, not many expected drastic changes, especially after the good run that Virat Kohli's men have had in the last one year, be it at home (against South Africa last year) or away (Australia, Sri Lanka and West Indies).

However, there was an expectation that the selectors might reward players who have done well in domestic cricket — Duleep Trophy and the India A tour. The selectors have chosen to ignore them.

The likes of Manish Pandey (in Australia), Gautam Gambhir (fine performance in Duleep Trophy), who is eyeing a comeback, Karnatka opener Mayank Agarwal, Kuldeep Yadav and quite a few will be disappointed to have not made it to the 15.

That Rohit has been retained is a shocker. He has not really set the field on fire in the five-day format and has been given numerous opportunities to prove his case — a luxury that many others have been denied.

Selectors's faith in Rohit's talent is all right but he needs to start scoring consistently and the rope that he hangs on to is getting longer and longer. This is unfair on other deserving cricketers, who deserve a chance at least if not the luxury of an extended run of misery.

"Rohit is a fabulous player, he has got immense talent but he hasn't got a longer run in Test cricket. What we have see with Rohit Sharma he is picked for one Test match, then he is rested for the entire season and then again picked. So the selection committee along with the coach and captain, whoever is picked, I am not only naming Rohit, whoever it is he will be given a fair amount of chances here onwards," Patil told the media.

Going by that logic, why was Cheteshwar Pujara not given continuous run despite his proven Test skills? For the record, the Saurashtra batsman was dropped after a fighting 46 in Kingston and replaced by Rohit for the Port of Spain Test.

Now that he has scored a back-to-back big hundreds 166 followed by 256* in the Duleep Trophy final, Pujara deserves a longer run.

The axe was expected to fall on Shikhar Dhawan too after his inconsistent run, but he was lucky to be saved once again. May be his 84 in North Sound and the ability to change the game rescued him.

"We want him to come good, not only Shikhar but all those whom we have selected. We have tremendous faith in all 15, it is not that we have only 15. We have a bigger pool and on the tour of West Indies we have forwarded other names to BCCI. We had a detailed chat with captain and coach and MS Dhoni also on how to go forward. So it is not that we are concentrating on 15 guys, we have real good number of other players as our bench strength," Patil said justifying Dhawan's retention.

The team picked is for all the three Tests. And once again the spin department led by the skillful offie R Ashwin along with left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja and leg-spinner Amit Mishra, will play a huge role on the spinner friendly tracks.

Squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Ajinkya Rahane, R Ashwin, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Amit Mishra, Mohammed Shami, Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul, Wriddhiman Saha, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, M Vijay, Umesh Yadav