A new low in Indian cricket

By John Cheeran
Sourav Ganguly, I'm told, has undergone a sex change operation yesterday.
From a middle order batsman he has been transformed to an all rounder by the five-man National selection committee.
That has been quite a bold step to play Test cricket, I must say.
But one fact remains. After such an operation, the person can't be productive.
So selectors have given Rahul Dravid an all rounder's effigy along with 14 cricketers to take on Sri Lanka in the first Test at Chennai.
The game is not yet over, mates.
Kiran More flattered Indian cricket followers on Tuesday only to deceive them on the very next day. Sourav Ganguly is back. I'm told he is back in the Indian Test squad as an all rounder.
This should qualify as the biggest joke 2005 has seen. The biggest of them all will be when Ganguly pads up for the Chennai Test.
Now it is clear that which forces were at work to bring Ganguly back. Only on Tuesday chief selector More described Ganguly's performance far from satisfactory.
What forced this volte-face?
My sources indicate that BCCI top brass had briefed the selection committee to bring Ganguly back into the Test fold, though the current team equation does not offer him a place.
Selectors say he is not a batsman good enough to find a slot in the middle order; he is not a bowler who is good enough to walk into the Indian team.
So what do you do?
Accommodate him as an all rounder, who can neither bat nor bowl. Jagmohan Dalmiya's and Ranbir Singh Mahendra's solution offered through the selection committee -meeting in Chennai lasted for four and half hours - is ridiculous at its best.
It is amazing that the man who reduced Sourav Ganguly to a jerk at Ahmedabad during the Duleep Trophy final could not find favour with the National selectors.
Zaheer Khan, who dismissed Ganguly for a duck twice in the Duleep final, is out.
Can there be any more travesty of justice?
More said: "We had to leave out Zaheer Khan although it was a tough call to make. Ganguly was taken as a batting all rounder instead of having Zaheer who is a bowler."
Well, soon Ganguly will be in the Indian team for his wicket keeping abilities.
It clearly emerges that under pressure from the ruling faction in Indian board, may be an offer of another term, selectors stooped to pick Ganguly.
Can there be a better insult to the intelligence of Indian cricket fan?
Ganguly an all rounder!
An idea that was never thought of from 1996 June till 2005 Novermber 22!
And this trick is to deny Zaheer Khan his rightful Test place, who had a rich haul of wickets in this year's Duleep Trophy?
Let me give you an independent perception about Ganguly as a cricketer. The Reuters report from Chennai states thus "the 33-year-old batsman had not made a Test hundred since December 2003 until he scored a laboured 101 in the first match against Zimbabwe at Bulawayo in September, increasingly looking shaky against short pitched deliveries."
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has disgraced itself.
Here I'm wrong. They never had any grace to begin with.
But there is no doubt that by picking Ganguly selectors - those who have votedfor Ganguly - have debased themselves. S. Karunakaran Nair, the BCCI secretary, put up a feeble defence when he said,"picking the team was the selectors' prerogative and it would remain that way. No board official has involved in the selection process."
But Nair should realize that picking the final eleven is a captain's prerogative.
The Power Play is yet to begin.