I really do hope that the message sent out by the selection of Sourav Ganguly is to the player himself rather than those around him. That would be sad, though it wouldn’t be the first sad thing to have happened in recent times.

Apart from an outstanding past, one that grows more distant by the week, the selectors didn’t have much to assess Ganguly with. He did the right thing by opting to play in England, rather than sit out as he was so terribly ill-advised to do in the past, but, by not scoring too many runs, you would have thought he had closed his chances of playing for India in the immediate future.

Quite honestly, I do not know how this selection changes that too much. When you pick 30 players, and India simply had to pick thirty like the rest of the world had to, you effectively carry out a census of India’s cricketers. And so, it is often whom you don’t pick that carries more importance. The more critical job is short-listing this set of 30 to the required 14. That would be a selection, a decision, this is merely gathering of data.

However, by making strange noises about picking only 22, and by sending covert messages to the media, the administration has ensured that conspiracy theories will stay alive and will use up more productive time than is necessary. Conspiracy theories are for those who seek to divert the truth, they are the sustenance of the weak, and they are more at home in politics than in sport. Hah, you might say, what is the difference and to my eternal, and growing, sadness, I have no answer.

... contd.