West Indies in India, 2018

[prasen9]

Dhawan was dropped as expected. Surprisingly, Rahane is there in the squad. Both Shaw and Mayank are in the extended team as well as Rahul. I am assuming Rahul will open with Shaw. Or has Mayank leaped over him with his 90 in the tour match? Bhuvi, Bumrah, and Ishant are out, rested/injured. Shami, Umesh, Thakur, Siraj are the pacers. Pant is continued as the keeper.

I suspect the XI will be:

Rahul, Prithvi, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane, Vihari/Kuldeep, Pant, Ashwin, Jadeja, Shami, Umesh.

[Prashant]

How many times has Shardul Thakur been selected & relegated to the bench so far? I don't keep track, but it seems to be frequent...

[PKBasu]

Shaw has been in blistering form in the List A Vijay Hazare trophy, although he failed in the tour game against the West Indies. I still think he deserves to play the first test against West Indies. I would prefer to open with him and Mayank, since they have played together for awhile for India A, and ask Rahul to bat lower down the order.

So I would go with Shaw, Mayank, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane/Rahul, Pant, Ashwin (if fit), Jadeja, Kuldeep, Shami, Umesh.

[Sin Hombre]

Rahul is our #1 test opener at this point and needs all the experience he can get.

Very decent team selection for a change.

I hope to see Siraj get a chance in red ball cricket.

[PKBasu]

Having just made a test century, Rahul will probably stay on as opener in the first test. I would have preferred to play him at #5 ahead of Rahane (who is worse at home, especially if the opposition has a decent spinner; in this instance, perhaps the Windies don't). But Rahane is vice captain, so he seems likely to play. Hopefully Mayank Agarwal will get a look-in at least for the second test (Hyderabad). The reason I think Rahul is inappropriate as opening batsmen is that he is a nervous starter, and often gets out before making 20 (of course, he usually gets a hundred once he passes 20, but the frequency of his low scores is too high).
The first test is at the batting paradise of Rajkot. Hopefully it will take spin before too long, but the team batting first there will revel.

[prasen9]

I don't mind seeing Siraj instead of Umesh. And, I don't mind Rahul instead of Rahane either. The last is quite unlikely though. Rahul has played 29 tests. One more test as an opener at home against mediocre bowling will not help him get better that much. On the other hand, Rahul averages 42 as an opener. He only got 6 innings in the middle order though and he averages 17 as a #5 and 3 as a #6 (all small sample size).

[prasen9]

I don't mind seeing Siraj instead of Umesh. And, I don't mind Rahul instead of Rahane either. The last is quite unlikely though. Rahul has played 29 tests. One more test as an opener at home against mediocre bowling will not help him get better that much. On the other hand, Rahul averages 42 as an opener. He only got 6 innings in the middle order though and he averages 17 as a #5 and 3 as a #6 (all small sample size).

Whatever we do this series is not going to affect us that much in the long run. The only things we should aim at here with respect to batting are:
1) Give debuts to Shaw and Mayank and as much time as possible as openers facing international bowling with coaching from Bangar, etc. to identify and rectify their issues to prepare them for overseas tours.
2) Hope Rahane and to a smaller extent Rahul get some form and consistency back.
3) See Kohli and Pujara continue their run-scoring.
4) Get the #6 bat, if given a chance, to bat well and work on their technical deficiencies.

[ankit1407]

Decent team selection for change with Opening batsman out and bowlers rested for a tough tour down under ..
Only thing I don’t feel comfortable is how they have treated Karun Nair and now Vihari seems to have gotten ahead of him .. if it’s about how one feels while watching player bat then I guess neither should be in the team but to be part of tour and get neglected and dropped afterwards must be a hard bullet to take for Karun..

[prasen9]

More alarmingly, the treatment of Karun Nair shows the problems in the system. Nair should not have been selected to play or selected for the tour if he was not good enough. How can you choose someone and then drop him on the basis of 2-3 FC matches? Anyone can fail in 2-3 matches. None of the other youngsters are that much better abroad. Vihari proved to be all at sea in England. Yet, he finds himself as the preferred candidate. The truth is that none of these youngsters will be overnight successes. Kohli was awful in his first England tour and for a bit. They need the time to mature. The people with the best techniques and temperaments should be chosen and then given a fair run. I hope Vihari at least gets a fair run. On the other hand, we have been carrying Rahane for about two years in tests now. How long will an established batsman get to keep playing while not producing even if he is one of our best batsmen overseas historically?

If you have a bad system, then sooner or later it will catch up with you.

[PKBasu]

Picking Hanuma Vihari at all is ludicrous after that pathetic test debut. Surely it is not his part-time bowling that they are depending on??

Varun Nair has been treated very badly indeed. And I don't understand why Shardul Thakur keeps getting picked.

[Atithee]

It’s Karun not Varun Nair, right? Regardless, I think Kohli has no business playing this series. He should rest and prepare for the Australian tour so we don’t have a repeat of the debacle after debacle like the last time. And, yes, Nair has been treated badly. However, I’ve been following every match he has played since that triple hundred, and he has generally been quite poor even against less fancied domestic oppposition. That’s what I recall.

[VReddy]

Picking Hanuma Vihari at all is ludicrous after that pathetic test debut. Surely it is not his part-time bowling that they are depending on??

Vihari scored a debut 50 and he looked pretty sound facing James Anderson/Broad on the second day. He took 3 wickets too. He didn't look that comfortable but no-way a pathetic debut considering that we had so few 50's scored in England.

[prasen9]

Let's state the whole record. Vihari scored 56 *and* 0 in his debut. That is, on average 28 runs/innings. During his 50, he was all at sea on the first day when the conditions were tough. When the ball was older and the conditions were not threatening, i.e., the ball was not swinging much, he did bat reasonably well and scored his 56. But, the same guy also scored the 0. We cannot cherry pick only the 56 and only part of the 56 where he was comfortable and forget the 0. When Vihari scored his 56, Jadeja scored a 86*. We know Jadeja's issues with the swinging ball and on tough conditions. The conditions were not that tough that day. Even then, Vihari got out and Jadeja did not. So, if we are going to pick one innings and decide based on that, Jadeja should come in as a batsman before Vihari. In India's second innings, Jadeja scored more than Vihari too.

There were very few 50's and I think there were very few 0's too of which Vihari was an owner of one. There were 9 50's and 5 100's by Indians in five tests. If we look at total production, Jadeja, Rahul, Kohli, and Pujara averaged better than him. He performed better than Rahane at England and I am fine if he is played before Rahane, who has not produced much in the last two years or so.

Having said all that, I am not calling for Vihari to be chucked out because I believe that people should be a fair run. We should not conclude decisively that Vihari is good or bad based on his one test in which he failed.

[VReddy]

Prasen: Your post supports my point, it was not a pathetic debut.

[prasen9]

No it was not pathetic. He looked all at sea at the beginning but he was nervous because it was his debut and the ball was swinging a lot. Let's also not judge on one match. Give him this series and then Australia at the least. We will lose a lot of precious talent if we treat them like we did with Karun.