Selectors face tough task in picking Twenty20 probables

The Indian selectors have a tough job at the best of times, but when they meet in Mumbai on Saturday they have a fresh challenge ahead of them as they pick the 30 probables for the Twenty20 World Cup to be played in South Africa in September. Thanks to the attitude adopted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the Indians have played just one Twenty20 international so far. Earlier this year the BCCI held its inaugural domestic Twenty20 competition, added to the domestic calendar as an afterthought with the World Cup in mind.

With this being the case it's difficult to see what exactly the five selectors will base their decisions on when they draw up the list of 30 names. The temptation could be to just go with the team that plays in ODIs, making the odd change here and there. However, the format of the Twenty20 game is significantly different from the 50-over version, and often players who are successful at the longer form find it difficult to get cracking in the shortest version of the game.

In India's case, Dinesh Mongia, who is not even in the one-day team at the moment, is probably the most experienced Twenty20 player, having played for Leicestershire over the last few seasons. Similarly Murali Kartik has a few games under his belt, but has not been in favour with the national selectors for some time now.

Woorkeri Raman, the former Test batsman and currently coach of the Tamil Nadu team that beat Punjab in the final to win the inaugural domestic Twenty20 competition, believes that it's critical how the selectors approach their task. When it was put to him that it might just be a good idea to have a different set of selectors picking the Twenty20 team, he said, "It's not about who is picking the side. It's about what they will do when they sit down to pick the side. They have to look for guys who are suitable for this format as against a reputation someone has built up in the longer version of the game. It is crucial that they know what it is they are looking for in a player."

Raman thought there was no problem in the same set of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar (chairman), Venkatapathy Raju, Ranjib Biswal, Sanjay Jagdale and Bhupinder Singh Snr. picking the team. "The same set of selectors has seen the domestic Twenty20 played in Ahmedabad and Mumbai earlier in the year. What is crucial is how they go about picking the side," he said. "The situation is simple. They can stick to the same old thing of reputations. The point of interest is whether the matches they watch are etched in memory and they decide to make some decisions based on this."

Raman suggested that the selectors should be looking for a slightly different kind of player when it came to Twenty20 cricket. "You need to look for someone who is always thinking on his feet. In this form it's worth going for some sort of mavericks. You can't really go with absolutely conventional guys. The game is so short you have to look for someone who can put the cat among the pigeons."

Whether the selectors pick a player like Tamil Nadu's V Devendran, who does not figure in their Ranji scheme of things yet proved to be quite a thumper of the ball and also bowled medium pace, or choose instead to stick with the tried and tested, remains to be seen.