Monday, October 22, 2001 The new five-member Indian selection committee -- which happens to have four old faces -- will sit down on November 23 to consider how best to plug the hole created at the top of the Indian batting line-up by the back injury to regular opener Sadagoppan Ramesh.

They shouldn't tax their grey cells too much: the best men for the job are already in South Africa. SS Das is a misfit in the one-day team, but he is India's first genuine specialist Test opener in years. His partner? Step forward Mr Rahul Dravid.

Dravid has done the job in the past, but he has been reluctant to keep the position. The reason, one suspects, is purely psychological. He has the perfect credentials for the job: his technique against the new ball is flawless and among the best in the world; he has loads of patience, and though he possesses a wonderful array of strokes, he is a natural grafter; his temperament is unflappable and he is unlikely to be rattled by verbals. He only needs to be convinced that by opening he will be serving the best interests of the team and not damaging his own.

Opening in Test matches is the most serious business in cricket, best handled by qualified professionals. Yet the approach of the Indian cricket establishment in the last decade to the question of openers has been either opportunistically short-sighted or plain cavalier, and the job has been entrusted to a succession of part-timers, jokers and sacrificial lambs.

In the early '90s, it suited the Indian game-plan to open with utility batsmen like Manoj Prabhakar and Nayan Mongia at home because it allowed them to play three spinners. But, inevitably, the plan came horribly unstuck abroad and quality middle-order batsmen like VVS Laxman were forced into the job on tough tours like West Indies and South Africa.

Occasionally, notional specialists like Vikram Rathour and Devang Gandhi were tried out, and they only stood out for being hopelessly out of place. Rathour has since taken to wicketkeeping to earn his place back, and Gandhi was so traumatised after his Australian misadventure that he couldn't even hold his place in the West Bengal team.

It was an approach doomed from the very beginning, and it shows up in the record books. In five of their toughest tours in the last decade -- Australia in 1991-92 and 1999-2000, South Africa in 1993-94 and 1996-97, and West Indies in 1996-97 -- India have tried out 14 openers and, even more amazingly, 15 opening combinations ... with consistently miserable results. In 20 Tests on these five tours, India have a first-wicket-stand average of 24.37 runs; the combined average in the last two tours to South Africa stands at 27.30; and on the last tour to Australia it touched a magnificent alltime low of 10.66. Sum of the story: battle lost even before it had begun.

If India are serious about competing in Test cricket abroad, they will have to put their best men up-front, and unlike in the past, it should not be a makeshift arrangement. Dravid has the skills for the job and he shouldn't treat it as punishment but as an opportunity and a challenge. He has batted at No. 3 for most of his career, and with the kind of opening batsmen India have had in the recent past, it has been as good as opening. It would serve him, and India, better for him come in at 0 for 0 rather than 5 for 1 or 10 for 2.

It will make for a more balanced batting line-up: Laxman at 3, Tendulkar at 4, Ganguly at 5 and Jacob Martin, who has the game for Test cricket but is being wrongly initiated through one-dayers, at 6. Dravid has been batting at 5 or 6 since Laxman's Calcutta heroics, and he is wasted so low down.

Consider the alternative. Connor Williams, after his Irani Trophy performance, is the front-runner for the job. But take another look at his performance. It came on a slow and low turner at Nagpur, against a bunch of friendly trundlers led by Debashish Mohanty. Now Mohanty is a honest seam bowler who needs a helpful pitch to do the job and who is not good enough to make the Indian side even in the absence of Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra. Williams scored 143 in the first innings, but was dropped six times.

If selected, Williams will go into the first Test with as much knowledge of South African conditions as everyone else watching television in India, and he will soon find that his perception of a bouncer is quite skewed. Donald, Ntini and Hayward not only bowl much faster than the seamers Williams has been facing in India, but on South African pitches they also get the ball to rise from a much fuller length. By the time Williams begins to comprehend the mysteries of balls that consistently rise over his knees, the tour would be over for him. Ask Devang Gandhi.

Sambit Bal is editor of Wisden.com India.

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