Selectors get a chance to reveal Twenty20 vision

If you look at the track record of India's national selection committee over the last few months, it is next to impossible to pick a trend and predict who they will plump for on Tuesday when they pick the team for the Twenty20 World Championship to be played in South Africa in September. Will they pick a squad on policy - youth over experience, Improvisers over orthodox players - or will they stick with the tried and tested players who have performed in Tests and one-dayers?

The biggest headache, dealing with massively experienced big stars who have made names for themselves in longer versions of the game but are untried in, and perhaps unsuited to, Twenty20 cricket, has thankfully been taken out of their hands. When Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly ruled themselves out of the long list of 30 probables, they gave Dilip Vengsarkar and his four colleagues a golden chance.

On Tuesday we will know how, if at all, this chance has been taken. There are growing signs that Mahendra Singh Dhoni will lead the Twenty20 squad, having settled into the vice-captaincy of the team in longer versions of the game. He would be a natural choice for successor.

The strongest indicator of the clarity of the selectors' thinking will come when they decide on Virender Sehwag. He was left out of the Test team to tour England on the back of poor performances in limited-overs cricket, despite having an above average time in Tests. Now, when it comes to picking a team for a version of the game closer to ODIs, where Sehwag's record has been far from flash, what will they do? Since being dropped from the national side Sehwag has struggled elsewhere, not making a mark in some matches in America, and failing to hit it off in the KSCA invitational tournament in Bangalore, where he is currently representing ONGC.

If you look at it logically - and that is not something you can consistently accuse the national selectors of - then Sehwag's place in the Twenty20 squad may be in doubt. Having said that, there is no sense in proving a point merely for the sake of consistency, and Sehwag should find a place in the squad merely for the brand of cricket he plays.

What is not in any doubt, however, is the case of Irfan Pathan. His struggles have continued on India A's tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya, a level of opposition against whom you would expect him to get wickets by the bagful. But even there he is being overshadowed by lesser lights, such as Tamil Nadu's Yo Mahesh.

Another potential stumbling block is the case of Harbhajan Singh but he has been among the wickets in county cricket in England, and should find a place in at least the Twenty20 squad, if not also the ODI squad.

One of the difficulties India's selectors face is that they cannot possibly watch all the domestic cricket that happens before picking a team. In the case of the Twenty20, they cannot even proffer that excuse for they did watch the domestic Twenty20 tournament in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. There, they would have seen the clean hitting of S Anirudha, and the all-round showing of Karan Goel. They would have Niraj Patel's ability to play the percentages and finish games, and Yusuf Pathan's brand of utility cricket. But will they remember any of this, and pick a squad full of fresh, out-of-the box selections, or will they just run with the usual suspects, some of whom may not even be keen on this form of the game?

The selectors, who will meet via a teleconference as Vengsarkar is in England while his four counterparts are in India, have a simpler task when it comes to picking the squad for the seven ODIs against England and the one-off ODI against Scotland in Scotland. The return of the Test specialists - Wasim Jaffer, VVS Laxman, Anil Kumble, Ranadeb Bose - automatically frees up space for the inclusion of Ajit Agarkar, Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina. Piyush Chawla was a revelation during the ODIs against Bangladesh, took 3 for 47 against South Africa in Ireland and has continued to pick up wickets for India A. Gautam Gambhir, who is in England but has not got an international game, made a century in the last ODI against Bangladesh and followed it up with an 80 against Ireland. Both will consider themselves desperately unlucky if they fail to make the cut.

Once again, though, the selectors will have to jog their memories a bit. For it has been more than a month since India last played an ODI, and the victory in the second Test at Trent Bridge, and the possibility of a Test series win, should not cloud their judgment when they pick the team for the forthcoming ODIs.

Twenty20 probables Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Mohammad Kaif, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Sreesanth, Manoj Tiwary, Ajit Agarkar, Karan Goel, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh, Ishant Sharma, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rajesh Pawar, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Joginder Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir, Munaf Patel, Niranjan Behara, Praveen Kumar, Anirudha Srikkanth, Ramesh Powar, Robin Uthappa, Niraj Patel.