Wriddhiman Saha

Calcutta: Where ironies go, it can’t get bigger than this: Set for his Test debut, Rohit Sharma collided with Wriddhiman Saha and it’s the 25-year-old from Bengal who got his maiden cap!

One can’t recall a ‘cover’, too, being rendered hors de combat in the hour before a Test, but Saha surely isn’t complaining.

Not that you can hold it against him.

Clearly, a most bizarre situation confronted Team India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Jamtha, on Saturday morning, when both V.V.S. Laxman and his ‘cover’, Rohit, became unavailable for Test No.1 against South Africa.

With no specialist batsman in the reserves, Dhoni and coach Gary Kirsten had no choice but to include Saha, the second wicket-keeper, in the XI.

Saha’s debut, incidentally, came at the same venue where Sourav Ganguly had played his final Test, 15 months ago.

It’s Kirsten who gave Saha the greatest news of his life, “around five minutes” before the toss.

“Rohit collided with me, during the warm-up session, and he’d looked bad... I was throwing some balls to (Amit) Mishra when Gary came up to me and said that I would be playing... Dhoni spoke to me after the toss... Everything happened so fast,” Saha told The Telegraph, when contacted on returning to the Pride Hotel in Nagpur.

Who presented him the India cap?

“Sachin Tendulkar... At that moment, it definitely felt great... Till then, I’d been quite normal... Sachin also gave the cap to the other debutant, (Subramaniam) Badrinath... Having got this chance, I’m looking to contribute to the team’s effort... Team jate bhalo korte pare...

“Today, I’m thankful to so many for their encouragement over the years... My parents (Prasanta, Maitrayee) and dada (Anirban)... My coach for long, Jayanta Bhowmick... It’s a long list,” Saha responded.

Actually, not that Dhoni has anything against Saha, but his worst fears came true at much the wrong time.

For, it was on the eve of the Test, that he’d told a well-wisher: “Please talk of anything, but injuries ki baat nahin karen...”

The Krishnamachari Srikkanth-headed selection committee needs to hold a review. Most important, it shouldn’t pick anybody who hasn’t ‘proved’ that he’s match-fit.

Laxman wasn’t anywhere close to that when the selectors chose the XV, on January 2-8. Well, it wasn’t very many years ago that even somebody of Sourav’s standing had to ‘prove’ his fitness.

He did so with a hundred in the Duleep Trophy.

Speaking exclusively from Nagpur, Srikkanth said: “We were faced with such a strange situation... What happened was very unfortunate and Rohit’s injury has only confirmed that anything may occur... We’ll now have to look at a logical way of avoiding a repeat...”

Srikkanth didn’t commit himself on whether the Board of Control for Cricket in India would be requested by his committee to sanction the selection of XVI players for a home series as well.

That’s a possibility, though.