Rahul Dravid must be either perplexed or amused at seeing his name in the list of probables for the Champions Trophy. Ordinarily you shouldn’t read too much into a list of thirty because it is like a census, or to use a more contemporary political term, “inclusive”. But when you recall a player of extraordinary pedigree there has to be a reason, and hopefully a very good one.

So either the selectors have now found in him something they didn’t know, unlikely, or they have found something in the others that they didn’t want to see. More likely. It might be the short pitched ball, it might be temperament, it might be discipline, it doesn’t matter because Dravid scores very high on all of those anyway. But by reaching out to him, they have effectively reduced their job to picking fourteen players for the Champions Trophy. You don’t recall a master chef as a stand-by to chop coriander, or a best-selling artist to sing in a chorus. Clearly he has been picked because there is a need, a hole, somewhere that needs to be plugged.

And so this is an admission of a shortcoming. Nothing wrong there; experiments fail, balloons burst, promised skills don’t materialise. But it has many implications for a side that has won virtually everything in 50 overs cricket in the last eighteen months. Assuming that Sachin Tendulkar returns for the Champions Trophy and that Sehwag is fit, this move will leave three players insecure. Either Dravid will take Gambhir’s slot at number three, or Raina’s at number five or six (which is where he would have migrated after the return of Tendulkar and Sehwag). And it means that Rohit Sharma is looking over his shoulder at two people; or maybe more correctly, ahead of him at two people.

... contd.