The pecking order with regard to the wicketkeepers’ slot seems to have been tweaked with the selectors deciding to opt for 25-year-old Wriddhiman Prasanta Saha of Bengal ahead of Gujarat’s Parthiv Patel as the second keeper in the Test side.
Since Mahendra Singh Dhoni made his Test debut on December 2, 2005 he has featured in 41 matches, while only two other stumpers — Dinesh Karthik and Parthiv Patel — have managed to get games in the same period.
The fact that Karthik has played six matches while Parthiv played in one Test shows that when Dhoni is fit there is little other wicketkeepers can do but to put their head down and keep scoring runs in the domestic circuit.
Karthik got his chance when Dhoni pulled out of the first Test in Chittagong following back spasms. In March last year, Karthik played again at Napier when Dhoni’s sore back troubled him. However, scores of 0 and 27 by Karthik in the Chittagong Test haven’t impressed the selectors.
Interestingly, Krishnamachari Srikkanth & Co have opted for Bengal’s Saha ahead of Gujarat’s Patel. On the face of it, Patel must be feeling like he has got a raw deal. In this first class season Patel has scored most runs among wicketkeeper-batmen. Parthiv tops the list with 782 runs from eight matches. He has also hit three hundreds and five fifties.
Saha is eighth on the list of wicketkeeper-batsman run-scorers. He has made 327 runs in seven games with one hundred (against Delhi) and one fifty. Over the past three seasons, including 2009-10, Patel has scored 1,256 runs more than Saha and hit five more centuries. Going by hard numbers, Patel should have made the cut ahead of Saha.
But the selectors believe that Saha is a better wicketkeeper than Patel. It is Saha’s skills behind the stumps that have impressed more than Patel’s runs. “Parthiv is in the Board President’s XI squad and he will get a chance to display his glovework against a tough side like South Africa. Sheer wicketkeeping skills is what matters in Tests and on that count we decided to go with Saha ahead of Parthiv,” a selector told DNA on Thursday.
“Saha has definitely impressed with his wicketkeeping skills. It is not that Patel is out of the picture. But at the moment we decided that if Dhoni gets injured then Saha is the better bet than Parthiv,” another selector added. This squad has been picked only for the first Test.
Meanwhile, the selectors have included rookie Karnataka pacer Abhimanyu Mithun in the squad for the first Test. He has been taken in place of injured S Sreesanth.
Another notable inclusion is that of S Badrinath. The Tamil Nadu skipper strengthens a batting line-up that is without Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh, both ruled out of the series because of injuries. Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman, who too were in the injury list, were picked. Meanwhile, Rohit Sharma has been named skipper of Board President’s XI squad that will take on South Africa in a two-day game against the visiting side in Nagpur on February 2 and 3.
India squad: MS Dhoni (capt/wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, S Badrinath, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Ishant Sharma, M Vijay, Sudeep Tyagi, Abhimanyu Mithun, Wriddhiman Saha
Board President’s XI: Abhinav Mukund, Parthiv Patel (wk), Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma (capt), Manish Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhishek Nayar, Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin, R Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Manpreet Gony
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