The senior national selection committee will meet in Baroda on Monday to pick the ODI and Test squads for the upcoming tour of South Africa. MS Dhoni & Co will play three ODIs and two Tests between December 5 and December 30 in the ‘Rainbow Nation’.
Sandeep Patil won’t exactly break his head over the composition of the limited-overs squad because most players pick themselves. The same, however, can’t be said about the tour party for the Tests. As India get ready for life after Sachin Tendulkar, the names of two discards, Zaheer Khan and Gautam Gambhir, are expected to dominate the discussions.
South Africa are the world’s top-ranked Test side and it would be foolhardy to ignore the experience of Khan — still the best pacer in the country — and Gambhir. Sample this:
Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav haven’t played a Test match in South Africa. Ishant Sharma has turned out in three, without much success. Shikhar Dhawan is in the form of his life, but the same can’t be said of M Vijay, who hasn’t registered a 50-plus score in his last 10 innings (across formats). And that’s precisely why Gambhir has to be on that plane.
The senior pros last played a Test match in December 2012 before getting dropped. But it wouldn’t be wrong to say that they have worked hard to earn a recall. At least the numbers suggest so.
While Khan has picked up 20 wickets at an average of 22.15 in five first-class matches, Gambhir has tallied 506 runs in eight innings. Both kick-started their ‘comeback’ journey by turning out for India ‘A’ against the West Indies ‘A’ in Shimoga and Hubli (October) before playing three straight Ranji Trophy matches.
Khan picked up seven wickets in the two unofficial ‘Tests’ against the visitors from the Caribbean.
He then returned figures of 1/38 and 4/62 against Haryana in Rohtak, 1/26 and 2/27 against Punjab in Chandigarh and 5/88 and 0/17 against Delhi in Mumbai. There shouldn’t be any doubts over his fitness either: the left-armer has bowled 147 overs in all. Also, he has a decent record in South Africa: 23 wickets in six Tests.
Gambhir scored only 11 in Shimoga, but made up for that failure with a compact 123 in the next match in Hubli. He made 31 and 44 in Delhi’s Ranji opener against Gujarat in Surat before hitting twin fifties (64 and 51 not out) against Mumbai at the Bandra-Kurla Complex Ground.
And in the just-concluded match against Haryana at the pacer-friendly Roshanara Club Ground in the Capital, he made 29 in the first innings before amassing a boundary-laced 153 in the second.
Delhi won the match by 105 runs. Gambhir has toured South Africa only once, in 2010-11, and averages 60.50 in two Tests.
No such luck for Virender Sehwag who has flopped on several occasions in the past few months.
His scores read 7, 38 (both against the West Indies ‘A’), 1, 15, 9, 35 not out, 3 and 6 (for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy).
Johannesburg (December 5), Durban (December 8) and Centurion (December 11) will hosts the ODIs. The selectors are likely to pick 16 players in the Test squad and it is learnt that the Test specialists will fly out of Mumbai at least a week before the series starts on December 18. A two-day warm-up game (December 14-15 in Benoni) will hold them in good stead. Johannesburg (December 18-22) and Durban (December 26-30) will host the two Tests.
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