Captain Gambhir dictates terms, has his own set of players

With the weather clement, a lot more people turned out at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Wednesday than had dropped in at any day last week. There was an added attraction too --- the Ranji Trophy  squad had been announced. There were happy faces, sad faces, surprised faces and angry faces. To give details of everyone’s reaction would take a lot of time but you could see all sorts of reactions. The only man who probably would have walked home happy and laughing was the team captain Gautam Gambhir. These days he is behaving like he owns the Ranji team, some say he is almost like a dictator. And the choice of the squad shows that he was probably the only one who spoke in selection matters. Of course, successful stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders has helped him get that chip on the shoulder. And no doubt he has been treated unfairly in a way at the national level. But then this is life and this is cricket. It brings the best down to earth.

With Virender Sehwag and Mithun Manhas out of the team and moving to Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, there was always talk that Gambhir, Unmukt Chand and Rajat Bhatia will play a key role. But the door on Bhatia was shut. There are different reasons being attributed to it.

Tapeshwar Tyagi, who was the manager with the one-day team in Dharamsala last season, says that one wouldn’t stand in slip position, the other wouldn’t move from slip. Virender Sehwag didn’t field anywhere else except slips while Bhatia wouldn’t field in the slip at all. This made Gambhir angry. Some also talk of the fact that Bhatia never moved up the batting order despite being asked to take responsibility. He was enjoying the game in the lower order, scoring plenty of runs off the old ball when the opposition had lost bite. The youngsters would be pushed up and sacrificed.

In a confrontation in Dharamsala, Gambhir had blasted both Sehwag and Bhatia. We know what the media will carry --- all goodie stuff that Gambhir never had any issues with Bhatia and that he was his friend and that team comes first. And that the two have played almost the same number of matches for KKR. But all that is poppycock. Gambhir had serious issues with Bhatia, his one-time favourite at the KKR. And there could be genuine reasons for this dislike as well.

In fact last season, when Chetan Chauhan had floated the idea of having Bhatia as the skipper, Gambhir was pretty livid. This was during the season. Chauhan saab, in his love for Bhatia, had once irked former Delhi skipper Shikhar Dhawan too by pushing Bhatia in the hot seat.

Delhi began well last season, then struggled in away games. They lost their quarterfinal to a very weak Mumbai, who probably fielded their worst-ever side.

If Gambhir thinks that Delhi players are too old, he has some valid reason. He has probably rightly brought in youngsters. But are they capable and what about the ageing bowling line-up? Is he and the selectors trying to suggest that there are no bowlers in Delhi other than Pawan Suyal, Sumit Narwal and Pradeep Sangwan. These are bowlers going over the hill and still the selectors have kept faith in them. And no, they are not incisive. The only youngster who has been brought in is Sarang Rawat and that boy failed BCCI’s age test a couple of seasons back. Parvinder Awana is the only one who looks the part. Add some of Narwal’s grit. But that is all.

Let us now look at the team....

Batting: Vaibhav Rawal, Milind Kumar, Nitish Rana, Yogesh Nagar and Dhruv Shorey make the young line-up that’ll help Gambhir and Unmukt.
Rawal played one Ranji match last year and scored 11. He has been considered very promising but he has not had any decent score since he made his debut. And he is too slow.
Nitish Rana is one quality lad. He plays for LB Shastri Club and sources people him so much so that one said that Sehwag asked him to come over to Haryana. Don’t know whether its true. But the lad seems to have a lot of promise.
Yogesh Nagar has been on and off. He didn’t play any Ranji match last year. Played three one-dayers and scored a total of 41 at the average of 13.67. In T20s he made 95 in four matches at 23.33. But over the years he hasn’t done anything to merit place in Delhi team now. Nagar’s action was found suspect and he was told not to bowl.
Dhruv Shorey had played two U-23 matches last year and averaged 16.33. There is no place for Mohit Sharma, who had shown his mettle. The selectors said they discussed him for a long, long time though. Jaideep Chauhan, whose dad Padam lobbied very hard, didn’t make it either though he impressed with a century against Mumbai last season for Delhi U-23. Normally if you hit a ton against Delhi’s arch-rivals Mumbai in age group cricket, you are considered a talent for the top.

Pace bowling: Sumit Narwal, Pradeep Sangwan, Pawan Suyal, Parvinder Awana and Sarang Rawat.
Narwal is 33 and Gambhir likes the fact that he can bat a bit too. But what’s the point when he has to do a batsman’s job. He does pick wickets but often when opposition scores a lot.
Pradeep Sangwan, even though officially is 24 looks like a 32 year old injury-hit medium pacer, who trundles in to deliver the ball without being able to even bend for a little extra effort. He was banned by the BCCI for a year for having tested positive. He took five wickets in three innings last year and a couple of them were tailenders. But he says he has worked on fitness. So let’s see.
Pawan Suyal has played just three Ranji matches over the last two years. He hasn’t got a wicket and has given away plenty of runs.
Sarang Rawat was supposed to be a player of promise. But unfortunately his career has not blossomed. A couple of years back, while playing for U-19s, he was found cheating. The DDCA hadn’t sent his age certificate, so the BCCI got his test done and he was found overage.
Spin bowling: The biggest question was over off-spinner with Manan Sharma almost a certainty as the left-arm spinner. Manan was lucky though last year with Delhi playing all their home matches at underprepared tracks at the Kotla.
And for some reason the wise men kept Manan’s competition Pawan Negi out. Negi was on Wednesday selected for the India A squad that’ll play South Africa in a warm-up game at the Palam grounds.
The selectors kept offie Shivam Sharma, a success at the IPL and a certainty in the squad, in reserves but selected Pulkit Narang, a trainee of Virat Kohli’s coach Rajkumar Sharma. There have been talks over the fact that Virat Kohli might have put in a word to the officials to take care of the kid from his coach’s West Delhi Cricket Academy. That could be true but it could also be out of thin air. Narang has picked 40-odd wickets in the DDCA league this season and for once you feel that a youngster is being given a chance on the basis of league performance which finally proves that league is at least of some value. There aren’t many young off-spinners around with Manoj Chauhan, having been tried and discarded. Mohd Bilal is another youngster whose name was doing the rounds.
Wicketkeeper: Mohit Ahlawat was the biggest surprise having not played any age group cricket. With Delhi struggling to get a decent wicketkeeper with Puneet Bisht not doing enough. His replacement was Rahul Yadav and the two were juggled last year. Neither did exceptionally well. However, Ahlawat was pluck out of nowhere. The LB Shastri kid (now don’t get surprised if I say Gambhir has a soft corner for that club), scored seven centuries and played two sterling innings. He made 180 against Sonnet and rescued his team from 102/9 to chase down 240. But this was all in DDCA league cricket. Ahlawat is from Sonepat and had failed to make the cut for Haryana even this year. But Delhi and Gambhir found him to their liking. Ideally, they should have gone for Rishabh Pant, the U-19 keeper who is among the India U-19 probables. But they somehow didn’t.

Honestly, it looks like Gambhir was the only one with a say in the selections. Ajay Jadeja didn’t say a thing. But two games into the season, things could be different if Delhi craps. It could be Gambhir in the backseat and people criticising him for backing players from LB Shastri and those of his liking. It could bring Jaddu in the picture.