India play their first practice game of the tour after the first Test - atest they failed comfortably. Now is their last chance not only to work on the familiar areas of ineptness (batsmen fishing, bowlers spraying), but also to find a way out of their strange selection predicament.

What they must do, first of all, is ask Shiv Sunder Das to carry drinks to allow both his possible opening partners, Rahul Dravid and Connor Williams some time in the middle. (Hopefully, Deep Dasgupta and Virender Sehwag won't be dragged into the openers fray.) Williams, selected as the second specialist opener in the squad, hasn't had a bat in South Africa yet. A failure in both innings would be a setback, but success in even one of them, would open up a dilemma.

Rahul Dravid has now scored 104 runs in seven innings at 14.85 as opener (all these matches have been versus South Africa), and was out twice edging Shaun Pollock to the cordon in his first spell. It's not his fault (entirely), but the team management – which includes Dravid – must be getting increasingly twitchy.

If Williams is brought in for the next Test, where does Dravid go? The only way out would be for Dravid to outperform Williams in this game, or at least run him a close second. If he secures the second opener's position for the second Test, he must then hold on till the third, after which he would need to sit down with Sourav Ganguly, John Wright and the selectors and resolve this mess.

All this of course, is based on the decidedly blinkered assumption that one or both of Dravid and Williams will get runs – they may well not. Andre Nel will open the bowling, and he is not slow. His partner will be Charl Langeveldt, who has been preferred to Nel in the senior squad. They could snap up the openers in their first spells, and then expose the middle. That is when Ganguly must use the time to try and conquer the curse of the short-pitched ball; VVS Laxman must try and discover the art of making an innings between 29 and 281.

Sachin Tendulkar should sit out to make way for five bowlers, of whom Javagal Srinath shouldn't be one. He should blissfully contemplate his 200th Test wicket and the instant benefits of a fuller length, while Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan, neither of whom looked like they were match-fit enough for backyard cricket, let alone Tests, iron themselves out. Ajit Agarkar and Venkatesh Prasad meanwhile should try and make a point and Harbhajan Singh, if that curious groin infection has subsided, should leap at the opportunity to bowl more than a mere 10 overs.

Amid all this ironing out, Ganguly must make sure India don't lose to a side that contains six international players, as well as Jacques Rudolph, who should get there soon.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer for Wisden.com India

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