Breaking/Brief news
December 25, 2005
India announce test squad for Pakistan
I did a comparison of the test squad and the contracted players' list. Some players will clearly be either very happy or very sad when looking at that comparison. In the happy camp, apart from Ganguly, Pathan, Dhoni and Ghambir would be the other ones. Pathan was promoted from Group B to A whilst Dhoni and Ghambir were given Group B contracts for the first time. Nehra and Balaji on the other hand will be in the sad camp. Both maintained there absence from the test squads, but not only that, they've also lost their previous season's Group B contracts.
Spare a thought for the confused camp, whose members will be Mohammad Kaif (dropped from test squad but retained in Group B), Zaheer Khan (recalled in test squad but demoted from Group B to Group C), Parthiv Patel (recalled in test squad but contract not renewed) & Murali Kartick (dropped from test squad but retained in Group C). From a Pakistani perspective, this is obviously a strong squad, and we'll have to do well to beat them. But I’m particularly pleased at the Ganguly selection.
Not that I’m a die hard supporter or anything like these people but purely because I maintain that Ganguly is at that stage of his career now where he will not contribute positively to Indian cricket in any sense of the word, in fact he might well be an unsettling influence on the team given his recent spats with Chapel (despite whatever the two might say about having patched up). Pakistan will no doubt be very pleased to see his name amongst those picked, as will they be to see the back of the extremely talented Mohammad Kaif, who I presume would have made the squad if Ganguly wasn’t picked. I also think we should grin broadly on the selection of a reserve keeper.
As much as TAFHCA hates to admit it Parthiv Patel will not get a single game all tour, barring injuries obviously. You can see why a team would want to carry a reserve keeper when they’re going on a long, tedious, away tour, millions of miles away from the home country, or when the first choice keeper’s form is not enough to instigate 100% confidence, but when you’ve got Mr. Confidence as your first choice and the total duration of the roughly 2 months, not to mention a flight from Islamabad to Delhi is barely 2 hours long?!?! But if India want to waste a squad place, then their choice. I’m not going to complain.
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