The curious case of the back-up spinner

Consider the bowling figures of these 4 spinners in IPL:
                     Matches    Overs      Runs     Wickets    Avg         Eco. Rate
Exhibit-1        6              22           161         7             23.00           7.31
Exhibit-2        4              16           114         4             28.50           7.12
Exhibit-3        5              19           106         4             26.50           5.57
Exhibit-4        5              18           133         3             44.33           7.38

If you are in charge of selecting the national squad and have been asked to pick one out of these four bowlers, who would you pick? Exhibit-3 has an exceptional economy rate for a spinner in T20 cricket, he is the most experienced of the lot, but hasn't represented his national team for a while now. Exhibit-1, on the other hand, clearly leads the way with wickets and average, has been playing in the national team and has also dismissed the leading run scorers of IPL by some wonderful traditional spin bowling. Exhibit-2 has been steady and has recently played for the national team. The one who is not doing so well, in the above figures, is Exhibit-4 and he also hasn't played for the national team for a while. Now, let's also clarify that there is nothing much to choose between these four when it comes to batting.

So, who would you pick now? The best bet looks Exhibit-1. If you want to take a bit of risk and purely go by form, then you might go for Exhibit-3. Or if you want to play a bit safe and go for the steadier option, then pick Exhibit 2. Can you think of any logic based on which anyone would pick Exhibit-4 above other three?
Well, unfortunately, our selectors don't seem to base their judgment on any sort of logic that a rational human being would apply (which probably shouldn't come as a big surprise, given that the chairman of selectors is K. Srikanth).

If you haven't guessed already, here are the four players in question.
Exhibit-1: Amit Mishra
Exhibit-2: P. Ojha
Exhibit-3: M. Kartik
Exhibit-4: Piyush Chawla

Why Chawla was selected in the T20 world cup squad will remain a mystery to me. Given that India hasn't played a lot of T20 internationals off late, it was probably a good idea to base the selection mostly on the IPL performances. Or the selectors could have looked at the performance in ODIs. But none of this explain why Chawla was picked. The selectors probably know something that rest of us don't. Chawla must have some hidden talent (which, one must say, he has done well to hide so far from the world).
The best part of this entire issue is that we'll never know whether the selectors are right about Chawla. Given that Jadeja would be picked in the team as the back-up spinner and we have Pathan/ Yuvraj to roll their arms overs, Chawla may never get a game.

The aftermath of the "IPL snub"...

The "IPL snub", as Pakistan likes to call it, has come back to haunt India again. I mean, what were those private franchisees thinking, not spending thousands of dollars on players who may never show up. How can they refuse to just give away money to Pakistanis?  They never thought their actions would have such serious repercussions. How naive one can be? A nation, whose entire economy is based on receiving charity from others, was deeply hurt.

The first big causality was, wait for it, kabbadi; when Pakistan's kabbadi team refused to tour India. You would think that should have taught us a lesson. That decision by Pakistan alone should have convinced all those IPL bosses to apologize to them. But, Pakistan had moved on. One of their ministers, I forgot which one, while speaking to a news channel said that the time of saying sorry was over. India should send a delegation, personally apologize to the cricketers and take them to play in IPL. I thought that was a very fair ask. I mean, sure, the two countries may not be willing to send delegations to share information on terrorism, help in investigation; but when it comes to such important matters as IPL, how can you not send your best and brightest representatives to sort out the issue.

And now, just when India was about to recover from the "kabbadi snub", comes the killer blow. Pakistan's national cycling federation has decided not to invite Indians to the biggest athletic event on the planet; an event, which completely overshadows the Olympics or the soccer world cup in terms of the fan following; an event, which every Indian child, growing up, one day wants to be a part of; an event known as Tour de Pakistan. The secretary of the federation showed tremendous clarity of thought and rational decision making when he said "As a protest for the IPL auction we have decided not to invite Indian cyclists for our event,"  

To understand what our countrymen are missing, you have to picture a 12 day journey that goes from Peshawar to Karachi; a journey that takes you through a great land full of suicide bombers and terrorist training camps. Indian cyclists miss the once in a life time opportunity of getting up close and personal with the Taliban leaders, the Al-Qaeda members and who knows, if they were lucky, they might even have been at the receiving end of a drone attack. Name another sports event in the world that provides so much adventure and learning experience. 

The critics might point out that the Sri Lankan cricket team got attacked while touring Pakistan. But they only stayed in the high security hotels and traveled, escorted, only between their hotel and the ground. How can one even compare that to the safe environment of the Tour de Pakistan, where the participants have to pass through the mountains and forests of the Pakistan on their cycles. And particularly if the participants are from India, a country against which Pakistani terrorists have never even raised a finger.

I guess this "cycling snub" has demonstrated what the scientists called "the butterfly effect". I'm sure Lalit Modi and the IPL owners never saw this coming. They all should be held responsible for the disastrous effect it would have on our nation. Let this be a lesson for all of us. If you are a corporate, forget making profit for your partners and shareholders, forget the sentiments of your customers; if you have money, give it to Pakistan. Else who knows, may be the great game of kho kho is next in the  list of causalities.

IPL is India's most innovative company

Fastcompany.com just released its list of most innovative companies across the globe and across multiple industries; and surprise, surprise IPL is at number 22. It's the no # 1 Indian company in the list and it's the 2nd among all the sports companies. I am not aware of the criteria used in coming up with the list and I'm sure most of the readers would disagree with some of the rankings (For example, what exactly did Facebook do in the last one year to jump from 15th position to 1st?). But the point to note is that from India IPL made it to the top-50, not the infosys-es or the TCS-es ("process innovation", anyone?). IPL finds itself in the company of Googles and Apples of the world and they beat Microsoft and twitter by some margin (ok, "Microsoft" and "innovation" are two words that are generally not uttered together, but still they are on the list). Let's appreciate them for what they have achieved so far.

More on this later..