Is Kiran More a dimwit?; or, to rephrase, is he a dimwit?

"To gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of through experience or study. "

That, says dictionary.com, the lazy man’s lexicon, is the explanation to that strange verb ‘learn’.
But trust Indian cricket selectors to stand the verb up on its backside every time they sit in one of their closed-door meetings — to drain knowledge, apprehension and jugglery through inexperience…

Indian selectors. Aah, that rare, but certainly not-on-verge-of-extinction, specie which simply refuses to learn. So they pick the team for the first Test against England, which is still a good week away, on the first day of the Board President-XI’s practice match against the visitors.
And what do they get? Eggs, a hundred and eight of them, on their face as Gautam Gambhir, dropped from the Test squad, goes on to hit those many runs the following day.

And who, pray, did they include in the squad in his place? Wassim Jaffer, who was taken as the specialist opener to Pakistan but instead got an all-expenses paid special sight-seeing role — from either behind the pavilion-end sight-screen or outside the ground.

Agreed, a home series is as good as a walk in the park for Indians on their spin-friendly tracks, but logic still demands the players be seen practicing their skills against the visitors, doesn’t it? Or is the team, named ironically after the Board’s President, just a joke? If yes, then the Agriculture Minister should be intimated forthwith. If no, then the England team management ought to know they aren’t getting the best available practice before the crucial series that their players and the media have already dubbed as tougher than the Ashes.

Don’t trouble your gray cells too much (it isn’t worth it, not when the ‘discussion’ in question is Indian team selection); just jog your memory back to the recent Pakistan series. The ODI team was selected (rather, Sourav omitted) on the fourth day of the last Test. A fourth day that still had to lend way to the final, when Sourav and Yuvraj failed to play the odds, time, patience and the Pakistani bowlers — in exactly that order — and avoid defeat. What if, like poor Gambhir at Vadodara today, they had managed to? Bring on the eggs, gentlemen…

But then, Kiran More and his ilk will retort that that’s the practice — picking the team for the next exam even before the results of the current one is out. And that they are merely following tradition set down by selectors over the years.

Tradition matters helluva lot in Indian cricket selection. As do eggs.