the concise oxford english directory defines the word select as carefully chosen from a large number as being the best or most suitable so when the five wise men of indian cricket loosely referred to as selectors exercise their skills in team composition it is prudent for you to assume that they would pick the best available talent in the land rightwrong for if that were to be true two of indias very best batsmen would be busting their guts in the middle and not warming the bench we are of course referring to rahul dravid and yuvraj singh while the senior pro from karnataka remains indias most technically accomplished batsman when it comes to attacking strokeplay the punjab da puttar is second to none yet there is no room for the duo in at least one form of the gameblame it on the myopia of the selectors or the fallacy of a rotten system that lends more weightage to perceptions than performance but the fact remains that indian selectors often end up triggering unsavoury controversies that take the focus away from the gameour selectors get it all mixed up because neither they nor the board of control for cricket in india bcci have a roadmap in place for indian cricket which has run on autopilot for close to eight decades we also dont believe in learning from others had the bcci been alive to the ground realities it would have adopted cricket australias selection policyaccording to former india coach greg chappell selection is not just about picking players its all about picking them when they are ready and moving them on when they are ready to be moved out unfortunately the bcci only took the australian on board but never subscribed to his philosophyso now we have a situation where there is a traffic jam in the indian batting with brand new cars jostling for space with a few old models that should have long been scrapped the problem with indian cricket selectors is that they have always suffered from a delusion that they have an obligation to please everyonein trying to do so they invariably end up upsetting everyone including the teams balance they also tend to approach their job from the wrong end over the years selectors have tended to pick or drop a player and then sought to justify their deed when all they ever need to do is pick the best and shut out the restif dropping dravid from the odis reflected their confused state of mind keeping an inform yuvraj out of the test xi betrayed complete bankruptcy of thought vvs laxmans polished unbeaten 72 in the kotla test against pakistan may have dilip vengsarkar and his colleagues nodding in approval but that still leaves yuvraj boxed in as far as test cricket is concernedeven if sourav ganguly fails a second time in the delhi test it is unlikely that he will sit out the second test as it is on his home ground