When Did HCA Become a Magician?

A Former Cricketer

One has to ask this question after hearing the claims made by a parent about the Hyderabad Cricket Association’s latest U-19 women’s 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 selection magician capable of compressing into a matter of days a process that would ordinarily take weeks, if not months—with the assistance of another woman cricketer looking after the State women’s selections.

The calendar itself raises the obvious question.

In two to three days, the selections were completed. In two to three days, 24 teams were seen. In the same period, players from all the districts were reportedly covered.

And, according to the parent, his daughter should now be among the final 15.

That certainly sounds like a remarkable selection exercise.

The HCA appears to have a magic wand for a BCCI tournament that begins in the first week of October. The entire process, according to the account, has been completed at extraordinary speed.

During my playing days, such a process would normally take nearly two months to get going. Today, however, Hyderabad seems to have discovered a considerably faster formula.

The BCCI U-19 tournament begins on October 6, while the present selection exercise started only in September. The support staff, too, has reportedly not yet been announced.

Ideally, once the State squad is finalised, the players should be handed over to the head coach and support staff for a proper preparation and conditioning camp. Selecting a team is only the beginning. Young players need time to train together, understand their roles, develop combinations and prepare themselves physically and mentally for competitive cricket.

This makes the reported timeline all the more intriguing.

In other words, the entire exercise—from league competition and identifying performers to narrowing the field to 26, conducting a final assessment and announcing the State squad—is said to have happened in 12 days.

That is some selection process.

But there is an even more fundamental question.

If talent from as many as 24 districts is being identified, observed and assessed through 24 teams, when exactly was there sufficient time to scout, evaluate and compare the players before constituting those teams?

And if the answer is that the players had already been identified and assessed beforehand, another obvious question follows: when and where did that extensive scouting take place?

Talent identification, particularly at the U-19 level, is not simply a matter of producing a list of names. Players need to be watched. Their consistency, technique, temperament, fitness and ability to perform under pressure need to be assessed over a reasonable period.

Yet, if the parent’s account is accurate, Hyderabad appears to have found a faster route.

A player can emerge from a district, enter the selection structure, compete in the league, survive the Super League, make the Top 26, undergo a final assessment and potentially enter the State squad—all within a remarkably compressed timeframe.

If that is indeed how the process works, perhaps other State associations should take notes.

Why spend months scouting talent when a fortnight can apparently do the job?

Of course, there may be perfectly reasonable explanations. The Association may have undertaken substantial groundwork before September 8. The selectors may have had detailed information about the players. The teams may have been constituted after an extensive scouting exercise.

If so, Hyderabad cricket deserves to know about it.

The issue is not whether Ambati Rayudu and Sunita Anand are capable of performing their respective responsibilities. The real question is whether any selection panel, however experienced, can genuinely evaluate and compare players from 24 districts through such an extraordinarily compressed process.

And there is another important detail.

Even after the State team and five standbys are announced by September 19, the job does not end. The selected players would still presumably need a week-long conditioning camp before they are ready to compete as a team, particularly with the BCCI tournament beginning on October 6.

That leaves an extremely tight window to bring the players together, assess combinations, work on fitness and conditioning, and prepare them for the competition.

Which brings us back to the original question: how much genuine assessment can realistically be completed in such a compressed period?

Perhaps Rayudu and Sunita Anand 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 own and not those of this e-paper.)