by Rahul Bhattacharya
Thursday, September 6, 2001

The five-man selection committee ended a week of hectic media speculation by appointing Sourav Ganguly as captain for the two-month South African tour. In a meeting that lasted over an hour and a half, only "five to ten minutes" were required to unanimously choose Ganguly, said chairman of selectors, Chandu Borde.

Borde felt Ganguly had done a "fairly satisfactory job as captain. He won six Tests out of 11 and reached four one-day finals. The decision was unanimous."

The rest of the meeting was used to review the tour of Sri Lanka with John Wright, who was a special invitee. Wright's views on Ganguly's captaincy however were taken only after the selectors had made their decision. There had been some loose talk that Wright would rather see somebody else in the captain's seat.

The selectors meet again tomorrow to pick a 15-man team for the one-day triangular tournament also featuring South Africa and Kenya. Ganguly will be at the meeting. It will be a selection made difficult by uncertainty over the fitness of several key players. Anil Kumble has been cleared by team physio Andrew Leipus, despite incurring some pain throwing the ball, while Sachin Tendulkar and Javagal Srinath have both indicated their availability for the tour.

There still remains a cloud over Zaheer Khan ("sore shin and stomach muscle", according to Lele), Ashish Nehra (groin) and VVS Laxman (knee). Lele said that Leipus's report would be used to review each of their cases in depth tomorrow. "Only the fittest team will board the plane to South Africa," said Borde.

An afternoon paper however reported today that both Laxman and Nehra faxed their availability to the Board last night. Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com India.

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