Wisden Cricinfo's Indian squad to Australia

So who should go to Australia? With the entire nation arguing about this, the Wisden Cricinfo staff decided to put their two bits forward, and recommend a team that the selectors should pick. The methodology was simple - each of the 11 staffers polled was asked to nominate 16 players, and each man picked got one point each. The players with the most points made it, and team balance, we assumed correctly, would take care of itself.

Naturally, divisions surfaced. But all disagreements were purely over the fringe selections - the reserve opener, middle-order batsman and fast bowlers. Eleven men got 10 or all 11 votes - delightfully, besides all the superstars you'd expect in there, Akash Chopra was one of those. Now, is that a sign of how much he has impressed all of us here, or does it indicate the poverty of options?

Eight of the 11 respondents voted to take two wicketkeepers along - all of them had Parthiv Patel in their list. Deep Dasgupta was the most popular second choice, with five votes, while Ajay Ratra got three. This was surely because Dasgupta can also open the batting, and looked the part in his brief stint for India at the top of the order.

But a reserve opener, in case Virender Sehwag or Akash Chopra required back-up, was needed. Sanjay Bangar was the most popular choice, with nine votes, while Sadagoppan Ramesh was well behind with three, and SS Das got one.

Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra were picked by everyone, but how much back-up would they have, and who would they be? Eventually, we collectively opted for a combination of four medium pacers and two spinners, with Sanjay Bangar to turn his arm over if picked in the XI. Aavishkar Salvi (eight votes) and Ajit Agarkar (seven) won over L Balaji (three), as Munaf Patel and Venkatesh Prasad got a solitary vote each.

The closest battle was for the position of reserve middle-order batsman. In the end, Yuvraj Singh, with six votes, won over Hemang Badani, who got four. Dinesh Mongia also got a solitary vote.

One conclusion was drawn at the end of this exercise: the selectors have a hard job to do, and no matter what they do, most people will find fault in their selections. The Wisden Cricinfo XVI illustrated this perfectly - only one of us picked exactly the same XVI as the collective squad. So was he prescient, or merely average?

The Wisden Cricinfo XVI to Australia
Eleven votes 1 Sourav Ganguly (capt), 2 Rahul Dravid, 3 Virender Sehwag, 4 Sachin Tendulkar, 5 VVS Laxman, 6 Parthiv Patel (wk), 7 Harbhajan Singh, 8 Zaheer Khan, 9 Ashish Nehra.

Ten votes 10 Akash Chopra, 11 Anil Kumble.

The rest 12 Sanjay Bangar (9 votes), 13 Aavishkar Salvi (8), 14 Ajit Agarkar (7), 15 Yuvraj Singh (6), 16 Deep Dasgupta (5).