A Former Cricketer
When did HCA become a magician?
One has to ask this question after hearing the claims made by a parent about the Hyderabad Cricket Association’s latest U-19 selection exercise, as published in these columns. If the sequence of events described by the parent is accurate, Hyderabad cricket may have discovered not merely a former international cricketer and highly accomplished batsman, but also a magician capable of compressing into two weeks a selection process that would ordinarily take weeks, if not months. Of course, ably assisted by another woman cricketer to look after the state women’s team selections.
The calendar itself raises the obvious question.
The U-19 League Stage is scheduled from September 8 to 11, with 24 teams comprising players from Hyderabad and various Telangana districts playing across six grounds at Keesara. The top performers are then expected to move into an eight-team Super League from September 14 to 16.
Then comes the Top 26 shortlist on September 17.
A final selection match follows on September 18.
And, almost before everyone has had time to catch their breath, the State Team and five standby players are expected to be officially announced by September 19.
In other words, the entire exercise—from league competition to identifying the best performers, from reducing the field to 26 to conducting a final assessment and announcing the State squad—is expected to be completed within roughly 12 days.
That is some selection process.
But there is an even more intriguing question.
If talent from as many as 24 districts is being identified, observed and assessed as part of the exercise, when exactly was the time available to properly scout, evaluate and compare players before putting them into these 24 teams?
And if the answer is that the players were already identified and assessed beforehand, another question naturally follows: when and where did that extensive scouting take place?
Normally, identifying genuine cricketing talent is not a laboratory experiment in which a result appears the moment a button is pressed. Young cricketers need to be watched. Their consistency needs to be assessed. Their temperament, technique, fitness and ability to perform under pressure need to be observed over a reasonable period.
Apparently, Hyderabad has discovered a faster formula.
A player can emerge from one district, be assessed, compared with players from 23 other districts, play the League, survive the Super League, enter a Top 26, undergo a final assessment and make the State team—all within days.
If that is indeed how it works, perhaps other cricketing associations should take notes.
Why spend months scouting talent when two weeks will apparently do?
Why conduct repeated trials when a whirlwind schedule can seemingly identify the best young cricketers in Telangana almost instantaneously?
And why burden selectors with the tedious business of watching players repeatedly when, apparently, extraordinary speed can produce extraordinary certainty?
Of course, there may be perfectly reasonable explanations for the compressed schedule. The Association may have undertaken extensive groundwork before September 8. The selectors may possess detailed information about the players. The teams may have been constituted after a comprehensive scouting exercise.
If so, Hyderabad cricket deserves to know about it.
Because the issue is not whether Ambati Rayudu and Sunita Anand are capable of doing their job. The issue is whether any selection panel, however experienced, can genuinely evaluate hundreds of young cricketers from across 24 districts through such an extraordinarily compressed process.
And there is one more little detail that should not be overlooked.
Even after the State team and five standbys are announced by September 19, the job does not end there. The selected players would still presumably need to undergo a week-long conditioning camp before being ready as a team for the next level of competition, as per the directions of the BCCI, with the tournaments beginning in October.
So the challenge is not merely to identify 26 players in a matter of days. They must also be brought together, assessed as a combination and prepared as a team—all within an incredibly tight window.
Which brings us back to the original question: how much genuine assessment can realistically be done in such a compressed period?
Perhaps Rayudu and Sunita Anand, perhaps, have not become magicians after all.
Perhaps Hyderabad cricket has simply discovered a selection formula that the rest of the cricketing world has somehow failed to notice.
If that is the new model, one hopes someone will publish the formula.
Indian cricket—and certainly every other State association—may want a copy. (The views expressed by the author are his and not of this e-paper.)
