Yet again, India is in the grip of a debate about who should captain its cricket team. As always, everyone has an opinion: broadsheets, tabloids, websites are all chockfull of speculation, comment, straw polls and sound-bites. Rahul Dravid is the overwhelming favourite with the bookies at odds of 3 to 2. Astonishingly, Sachin Tendulkar is slated at 2 to 1. But Sourav Ganguly, at 10 to 1, could be the man to back. Pushed and prodded by reporters and editors, two camps have clearly established themselves through the week: Pro-Ganguly and Anti-Ganguly. The first comprises mostly past captains and players - Tiger Pataudi, Nari Contractor, Ravi Shastri, Erapalli Prasanna and Hanumant Singh represent a judicious mix of cricket acumen over the last four decades. They believe that Ganguly gives back as good as he gets, backs his youngsters and his instincts, is only as out of form as Sanath Jayasuriya is, and could not win in Sri Lanka only because of a team that, according to Contractor, was akin to a person without "one arm, one leg and one eye".

The other camp is led boisterously by Raj Singh Dungarpur, whose only official involvement with Indian cricket these days is limited to overseeing the affairs of the National Cricket Academy. He has found the odd backer, such as Polly Umrigar, who is both a former Indian captain and a past chairman of selectors. Their contention is that Ganguly is not scoring enough runs, and his personal behaviour is unbecoming of a captain.

While sifting through the facts and opinions, the selection committee will have their hands tied by an old bugbear in the system: that of choosing the captain before the team. It is Ganguly the Test No. 5 whose place should be on the line, not Ganguly the one-day allrounder, and certainly not Ganguly the captain.

The selectors must thus indulge in some mental acrobatics and decide whether Ganguly is worth captaincy and a place in both the one-day and Test teams. Their escape route could be to make Ganguly captain of the one-day team, and defer the selection of the Test team till the end of the triangular series on October 27. But the best option is to give him the long rope: appoint him captain for both the one-day and Test series, spell out to him that a captain's on-field behaviour must be satisfactory, and then patiently consider his suggestions for the squad the day after.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer for Wisden.com in India.

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