It’s quite baffling to note how many teams have picked players that are unfit or doubtful for whatever reasons to make it to the World Cup. And now, all these players are being given warnings and small time periods to prove their fitness or match-worthiness. The strangest selection of this has to be Irfan Pathan.

He was sent back from South Africa because he was woefully out of form and he needed to spend some time in domestic cricket. Then he got injured. And he carried his injury through the Sri Lanka series. Now the Indian team was announced before the last match against Sri Lanka and Pathan had neither proved his fitness nor his return to form. Yet he was picked for the squad going to the Caribbean. This doesn’t say much about the selection process to be honest!

Why would you pick a player who is still out of form (until proven otherwise) and is unfit? And all this at the expense of Ramesh Powar. Assuming Pathan was fit but not in form, would he play in the West Indies? I doubt it. And most people doubted it. India does have some depth in their pace bowling and Pathan would have in fact been a burden. He may have scored a few, but then India is well served in that department too. So where does Mr Pathan fit in? Out of the team, really!

India is not the only team doing these acrobatics. Shoaib Akhtar is yanking the PCB’s chain rather bad these days! First the PCB announced that Akhtar and fellow paceman Mohammed Asif had tested positive in a drugs test. Thereafter they got acquitted and have since refused to undergo any more tests. The PCB has been rather clear in its “no test, no tour” stand and one hopes they can stick to it. Akhtar toured South Africa also recently but could not manage to make any impact.

Finally, the Brett Lee issue had been put to rest. Stuart Clark gets the nod for the World Cup and the Australians must be devastated! Mind you Clark is a steady bowler but he is of the same style as McGrath and to some extent, Bracken. Line-and-length is his forte and he doesn’t have any real pace to frighten the batsmen. And that’s what Lee offered for his sudden bursts of pace could change the course of a match. But Australia, who had initially postponed Lee’s fitness test from Friday (Feb 23) to Tuesday (Feb 27), decided not to delay and give Clark enough time to be mentally prepared. Doubts over Andrew Symonds still linger and having been operated upon just three days ago, his confidence about making it to the tournament is amusing!

So at final count, only one confirmed drop and if you ask us, we see at least two more—Pathan and Akhtar—getting added to that list.