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Open with Tendulkar and Ganguly

After watching the 'tandav' down under of Devang Gandhi, Sadgopan Ramesh and V.V.S. Laxman in the three innings so far, here's a thought: should the Indians open the next three innings of the series with Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly to counter the firepower of McGrath, Fleming and Lee?

Putting Plan B into action after Plan A has fallen through - and Plan C when Plan B has gone the way of plan A - is what Test match strategy is all about, and given the "skeletal service" provided by M/s Gandhi, Ramesh and Laxman, it may be worthwhile to check out the Sachin-Ganguly option.

The obvious reason is that they anyway come to the crease when there is next to nothing on the board, three batsmen are already in the pavilion, and the ball is still brand-new. So what difference does it make if they come in at No. 1 and 2, instead of No. 4 and 5? At least it provides us some safety in numbers: we know that there are nine more to follow, not five. And at least, the suspense - of whether they will have to go in at the 5th ball of the 3rd over or the first ball after the drinks' break - won't kill them.

Sure, they might fail too, but considering their individual records, their chances of coming good are better than the Gandhi-Ramesh and Ramesh-Laxman combinations. Consequently, the team has a better chance of getting off to a good start. And, then, at least an expectant nation knows that two guys who were "qualified" for the job, went out and tried their best, unlike you-know-who, who aren't, and didn't.

There are even more compelling reasons for the team "management" to try Sachin-Ganguly: a) They open the innings in the one-dayers and are used to the vagaries of the new ball. b) Putting your two best strokemakers at the top of the lineup is the strongest signal you can send to the Aussies who are experts at decoding the "body language" of their opponents.

But there is a third, more important reason why the captain and his deputy need to move up the order. If the Indians so consistently allow the hosts to run up huge scores in spite of early wickets, and if, in turn, they fail to match the total of the opponents in innings after innings, clearly something is wrong with our batting and bowling, and we need to do something about it. That's what opening the innings with Sachin and Ganguly will achieve: it will give the team a lot more options in the middle order to start with, restoring Laxman to where he rightly belongs. And it will give a lot more options with the bowling attack whose effective strength at the moment is exactly one-and-a-half (0.75 of Javagal Srinath and 0.25 each of Ajit Agarkar, Venkatesh Prasad and Anil Kumble).

A second way of strengthening the bowling and batting may be to get Rahul Dravid to keep wickets in the third Test, which will open up one more spot in the side. Batting at one-drop after keeping wickets for an entire innings may be a tough "ask", but Dravid needs a bit of time in the middle. And, hey, would he require to come in so early if Sachin and Ganguly open?

What if Dravid is injured while keeping? Remember David Boon. The fat opener was injured in the first session of play of a Test match, but stayed on, came back to the pavilion for lunch, had the injury stitched up 'without' anaesthetic during the break, and returned to play after lunch. That's what playing for the country is all about.

So how would this side fare in Sydney? Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid (wk), V.V.S. Laxman, Vijay Bharadwaj, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, T. Kumaran, Harbhajan Singh. Five bowlers, six batsmen; three batsmen who can bowl and one batsman who can keep. Surely not any worse than in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Why Bharadwaj and Kumaran, one might ask. At least so that it doesn't give Jaywant Lele the ammunition to declare at the end of the next selection committee meeting that since the team "management" didn't consider them for the playing XI in any of the three Tests, their names didn't come up for selection.

As for Gandhi and Ramesh, they can pad up to open the innings the moment the Indians' plane flies into subcontinental airspace. And the paid pipers of Indian cricket - commentators and experts - can pull out their thesauruses for adjectives about the dashing new pair and their daring feats on home soil.

Krishna Prasad