Memo from the Board: Shape up or ship out

Just as selection into a large group - like the 30 probables for the World Cup - can be a pointer to a young player that the selectors are watching him, being left out can send a strong signal to an established player. Virender Sehwag has been "given a break" for the first two ODIs at home against West Indies and how he handles the decision - which itself comes as no surprise - will determine just how his India career pans out from this moment on.

The easy thing for him to do would be to point to seven ODI hundreds, close to 5000 runs, a strike rate of 95.96, and sulk. Sehwag can blame the selectors or go for that favourite target, the coach, thinking this would never have happened had someone else been in charge. That would be true, though not as he intended; there was a time when it was impossible for the selectors to drop the big names in a team, but fortunately, that has changed.

The right thing for Sehwag to do, with Delhi not having any matches left in the Ranji Trophy, is to return to Madras Club [in Delhi] and A N Sharma, his longstanding coach, get the pads on and get to work. There's something quite wrong with his batting at the moment, and if the combined wisdom of the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Greg Chappell and Dilip Vengsarkar, all great batsmen themselves, could not sort things out, perhaps the time has come for a spell in the nets with the old coach.

The silver lining in this apparent cloud hovering above Sehwag is that the selectors have shown quite clearly that being left out of the Indian side no longer means the end of the road. Someone like Dinesh Mongia was able to force a comeback, forget about the more visible players like Zaheer Khan and Sourav Ganguly.

Ganguly is back in this team after missing 41 one-dayers. That might have dented his bank balance a bit but it certainly made him a better cricketer. The kind of knocks that Ganguly played in South Africa, and the conditions they were played in, is ample proof that he'd regain the stomach for battle - which might have been weakened somewhat by years as captain of the side.

Zaheer spent almost a whole season in the wilderness, bowling over after over in any competitive cricket that he could get - for Baroda in the Ranji Trophy, for Worcestershire in County Cricket, for the A team in the Challenger Series, and came back to the India side stronger for that. Sehwag has been given a chance to do just that - and who knows, he might even be back sooner than people think.

Another man who finds himself in almost the same boat is Irfan Pathan. His bowling has dropped away so much that even in domestic cricket wickets are proving hard to come by. Pathan's case is helped, though, by the fact that at least one discipline of his cricket, batting, is rolling smoothly on. The fact that he lends balance to the one-day team, and allows an extra batsman or bowler to be played as required, means that he is unlikely to stay out of the squad for long.

However, the same can hardly be said of Mohammad Kaif and Dinesh Mongia, also dropped, and one might sympathise if they felt despondent, because the road back to the Indian team may not be so easy for either.

The one slightly bewildering aspect of this selection is the presence of four openers - in Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir. With the World Cup only 8 games away, there isn't much room to give players a go to see what they are capable of, and yet India can ill-afford to go into the World Cup with untested players

The one slightly bewildering aspect of this selection is the presence of four openers - in Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir. With the World Cup only 8 games away, there isn't much room to give players a chance to see what they are capable of, and yet India can ill-afford to go into the World Cup with untested players. How the team management - and Vengsarkar made it clear that it was up to them to make the call - will use these four batsmen remains to be seen, given Tendulkar's stated preference to open the innings. Also interesting is the selection of Dinesh Karthik, as much in a batting capacity as a reserve wicketkeeper. This leaves the batting bench looking just a touch thin, at least on paper, though Karthik has shown that he can more than hold his own in front of the stumps as behind.

And finally, it should miss no-one's attention that Sachin Tendulkar has been named vice-captain of the team. This could suggest that Tendulkar would not be averse to taking the India reins once again in the future or that the selectors have lost faith in Sehwag on a long-term basis, or both. For long Tendulkar, who stepped down from the captaincy after the home series in South Africa in 2000, has insisted that he does not want the captaincy back. Perhaps that has changed.