Three formats, three different sets of players to tour New Zealand. Even before I begin this piece, this would be a definite first in Indian cricket, when teams with varied sets of players would be on tour for the different versions of the game, including one, who would stay in the country for not more than seven days. The reason? He has been selected for the T20s only!
Comments on selections, especially one that has seen the selection of 23 players in the touring party, would be rife with more than its dissatisfied set of on-lookers and fans. Talks of selection biases, brought about due to nepotism and zonal favouritism is as commonplace as George Bush jokes, and this one has been no different. For me, there have been a few surprises, and then there have been a couple of stinkers, yet, to be fair to the selection panel, if someone were to ask me whether this squad has it in it to get one across the Kiwis in their own backyard, my answer would in all probabilities be yes.
Most of those in the test squad select themselves. In fact, there is no problem with the starting eleven, that includes the six batsmen, a wicket-keeper, three seamers and the spinner. Rahul Dravid may have been that name on many a fan’s lips for been given the boot, yet, the conditions in NZ are as different from those back home as chalk is from cheese and his experience there would be handy.
Out of the others, Amit Mishra becomes an automatic selection into the squad because of his performances against the Aussies, and with the threat of Bhajji’s injury looming large, it would make sense to carry an extra spinner. The fingers, however, get pointed in the selectors’ direction when it comes to the selection of the other four; Dinesh Karthik, M. Vijay, Dhawal Kulkarni and L. Balaji.
Balaji, Dhawal Kulkarni and Praveen Kumar: It has been some time – 15 months – since Munaf Patel played in a test match, and it remains to be seen whether his body survives three successive tests under conditions which would be cooler than most he would have encountered back home. Hence, Team India will probably never go into a match with more than three seam bowlers, but they do need an experienced back-up as their fourth. And to my mind, the selection of L. Balaji and Dhawal Kulkarni together, makes no plausible sense whatsoever.
Balaji’s inclusion is a surprise by itself, but having him as the fourth bowler – given that Kulkarni has yet to taste international cricket – would be a much graver shock. While one does agree that one doesn’t need absolute pace to revel in the Kiwi conditions, Balaji’s has dropped to the unimaginable levels of around 120 km/hr, much below the required threshold one would have imagined. Likewise, if the selectors did think that even that sort of pace is not necessary, then an Irfan Pathan too becomes a strong case for selection for the tests; what with his slow-paced in-dippers to go with his rather strong batting capabilities. 
Not that I would have had agreed with Pathan’s selection either.
It would have been too early after recovering from his injury, to have got S. Sreesanth into the squad, but then there were others like R.P. Singh and Praveen Kumar who had had a definite chance of getting in. More so Praveen Kumar, who makes it to New Zealand for the shorter formats of the game, but, would have to return back before the tests begin. What makes it more stunning is that amongst all of those in the squad, he is the only bowler who can make the ball really talk with the swing movement and in conditions that should support this brand of bowling, it hardly makes sense to not get him into the line-up. 
For me, his exclusion is the biggest surprise of this selection drama.
*Dinesh Karthik vs Parthiv Patel’: Dinesh Karthik’s selecton has also raised a few eyebrows, and the reasons have been more than one. For one, his appalling performances, both behind and in front of the stumps – in the last test series that he featured in against Sri Lanka would have almost shut his career out. Secondly, Karthik’s Tamil Nadu connection – the same state that the chief of the selectors is from – would have made it easy for the critics to start the yap. Yet, I would say that if a second wicket-keeper had to be taken, it was between Karthik and Parthiv Patel, and although there was nothing much to choose from between the two in terms of their ‘keeping skills, the former’s batting performances in the Ranji and the recently concluded Duleep Trophy have been much better than Patel’s. (Karthik topped in the Duleep trophy and scored 634 in Ranji, which made it almost 300 runs more than Patel’s aggregate this season)
Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Akash Chopra, Wasim Jaffer, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, and Vijay’s statemate, S. Badrinath, are only a few that come to mind and many of the aforesaid would have had a much better probability of getting in. Rahane and Pujara have had a fantastic season, Chopra has a reasonable one but ahs the technique to nullify the seam bowling, Jaffer has had both, a great season and the required technique, Sharma and Raina are the ones for the future and even if someone were to be nurtured in test cricket, it would have to be someone with some kind of international experience, while the case of Badrinath is really queer. After smashing the selection doors for most portion of a season and a half, he gets a call-up for the six test matches against Australia and England, doesn’t play a single match and is dumped in the next!
And so, why does M. Vijay hop into the flight? Frankly, apart from something that would have caught the eye of the selectors during the first class season, I have absolutely no clue whatsoever.