Opening Gambit

Gautham Gambhir must be licking his chops. He feasted on some lacklustre South African bowling, on a dead track, and clawed his way to 96 uninspiring runs, to make up for the two failures against Australia that preceded that innings, and the two against South Africa to followed. And that's all he needed, because he now finds himself with two Tests against Bangladesh in which he can cement his position in the Indian side - until the next overseas tour, of course. One can only wonder what Sadagopan Ramesh makes of it all. It's quite amusing to go back and read my article from 1999 about India's opening conundrum - apparently absolutely nothing has changed. India have tried, in no particular order, Akash Chopra, Parthiv Patel, Sanjay Bangar, Wasim Jaffer, Shiv Sundar Das, Virender Sehwag, Deep Dasgupta, Rahul Dravid, Hemang Badani, Sameer Dighe, Devang Gandhi, VVS Laxman and of course Ramesh since I wrote that article. Two of that list have delivered the goods - Sehwag, who is still in the job, and Ramesh, who should be, but isn't. Yet the merry-go-round continues. What price Barrington Rowland taking over from Gambhir early in 2005?