Indecision at the top

The practice match Vs Pakistan A petered to a draw but not before the inadequacies of Indian bowling were exposed. Faisal Iqbal helped himself to a 80+ score, which was reported by crickinfo as a 100 in the headline for a while but later retracted to a more correct headline ‘Faisal defies Indians’. Crickinfo has the scribes in Lahore – Siddarth Vaidyanathan, Dileep Premchandran but still could not live up its reputation, in the coverage of this side match.

Zaheer seems to made some penetrative spell on the morning of 3^rd day but nothing of the variety to say ‘ah! Here we go,,we have rediscovered our number 3 medium pacer’.

The duel between Wasim Jaffer (WJ) and Gautam Gambhir (GG) was pretty much unresolved with marginal delta marks going to WJ for his 2^nd innings effort and to GG for his 1^st innings aggressive stroke play.

My take is - go with WJ. He is in terrific form and a little more tight in defence than Gambhir. Here is what might prevent WJ from not making it :-
- General tendency to stick with who is already there (GG)
- I remember GC's comment about GG after the Kotla test against SL. By then, GG had failed twice and was in real danger of replaced by WJ in the 3rd at A'bad. GC said something to the effect " GG is not much of a talker and if we drop him, he will withdraw into a shell" or something to that effect (don't ask me for links.. I am sure, it must out there somewhere).. GG got one more chance in the 3rd and wasted that too. Incidentally, I could not see the connection between a taciturn and scoring runs in matches. I guess somehow GC found the relationship or the media mis quoted him (as happened many a time before).
- VS too preferring a status quo approach- by willing to go out with GG.
- WJ differentiated himself by a small delta in the 2nd inning over GG (but by then the match was lacking any competitive interest from a bowler's point). WJ did not do anything great (than GG) in the 1st. Infact, GG seems to have played more positively in the 1st.
--------------------
I wish it is WJ, who is going to VS' partner at least from the point of view trying out something of an unknown dimension. I am sure, given a chance, WJ will try and redeem himself. He knows that this his final chance. A failure here will mean that he has to stick himself to the maidan cricket and Wankhade, turning for M'bai. GG will probably get more chances since he is in the ODI scheme of things too.