Dhoni & media leaks and Tendulkar's return to the top

So after the Ganguly-Chappell episode that was triggered by a leak, it is the turn of M S Dhoni to feel heat. With no such leak-proof adhesive available in the market yet, the best Dhoni could now do is to stitch up his mouth if he does wish to speak out something that is remotely controversial. Whether that augurs well for Indian cricket that the skipper needs to be extra cautious before getting ‘exposed’ by the ‘tipsters’ that hound the cricketing set-up, remains to be seen.

The list is rather small in this case; there were eight of them in the selection room and includes the skipper, the coach, the five selectors and the convenor of the selection meetings, N. Srinivasan. If at all the ‘resignation’ word had been blurted out, it had to be from one of those eight, and if Dhoni is the aggrieved party, then the list is further pruned down to the seven. It gets shot down to six if one discounts the role of a rather unfathomable villain in Gary Kirstein. The interesting bit here is that the first time this bit came out in the open was in a Kolkata based newspaper, and it is a rather stark pointer to who could have been involved. Anyways, your guess is as good as mine, and hopefully, not too many in the team would be distracted too much by the whole affair.

The other news of the week coming from the Indian cricket camp was the welcome return of Sachin Tendulkar. With England already in doldrums, and Tendulkar having recaptured the form that made him the batsman that he is, it should bode well for the hosts. It has also been mentioned, and even as I write this it has been confirmed, that Sachin Tendulkar would open the Indian inning with Virender Sehwag in the fourth ODI against England at Bangalore. This would also mean that Sehwag’s long time opening partner, Gautam Gambhir, would bat at number three.

One finds that a rather surprising decision, and for more reasons than one. Gambhir and Sehwag have not only turned out to be India’s best opening combination in all the three forms of the game, and while Tendulkar may even go on to do the job, the constant chopping and changing may not augur too well for the southpaw from Delhi. This looks to be a classic case of putting the individual’s preferences over the team’s as a left-handed man at the top could have helped in negating the exaggerated movement that the bowlers would receive from the moist Bangalore wicket.

The one other point that one would like to bring out is that it has been eight months since Tendulkar played an ODI. While his average against the Aussies suggested that he is anything but rusty, batting first up against a swinging ball may just take a little more out of the maestro. Again, with the amount of cricket being played in this day and age, Tendulkar may want to prolong his career by being away from some of the matches, thus breaking the all-so-important rhythm that any openers need at the top of the order.

This is why, a tried and tested combination in Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag would have made much better sense.

As it turns out, with the likes of Tendulkar, Sehwag and Gambhir at the top of the line-up, the bowlers’ task has all of a sudden become very unenviable. Ryan Sidebottom may not be so disappointed after all, after having being rules out of the series!