As India prepare for a Test match with possibly their least experienced middle-order ever, it might be worth looking at what constitutes good team selection.
Selectors are like wicketkeepers, remembered only when they make mistakes. Success or failure of their job is judged on whether the team wins or loses. In the former case, selections seem inevitable; in the latter, ill-advised.
As in life, however, you can do the right thing and get the wrong result (and vice versa). Theoretically, AI can select a team entirely by algorithm, but the process will lack important human qualities: imagination, creativity and unpredictability. Two of the most intelligent writers on the game have given us two fine notions of a cricket team, stressing its essential variety.
