In a 50-over World Cup season in this land, everyone is required to put his two pennyworth in when India blare their picks, which then appears in due course to eclipse both the picked and the pickers, leaving only befuddlement for the likes of us. Sallying forth to bring the Asia Cup home, India the other day had chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar, a persistent fringe player in his day, telling us whom he had chosen, whereupon a journalist asked a bigwig why Ravichandran Ashwin had been left out.

The strictly anonymous rejoinder that the question elicited was ingenious enough, the sort that showed a clever man determined not to be outargued without a combat. Ashwin, the reporter was told, had not played a One Day International for quite some time, which was true. But a cricketer, alas, cannot really play if he is not chosen and, till date, India’s high-level string-pullers have never really explained why the world’s finest spinner has come often to be left out, even from matches in the conventional format in recent years. The mix of players gets cluttered with an assortment of essentially bits and pieces performers designed for easier workloads especially when limited- overs cricket comes around, leading to the authentic exponent of an art still as useful as any other finding himself out of the reckoning. Madan Lal is among the stalwarts of yesteryear who has spoken about it, sounding perfectly bewildered, but people, pundits or whatever, who have tended to be mystified by Ashwin being bypassed seem to have resigned themselves to the official way of doing things, even if it is transparently unfair.

His statistical standing in the game can simply not be called into question, which adds considerably to the mystery of the spells of sudden spurning since the waning days of Virat Kohli’s reign. That he has come to be excluded from the squad for a continental competition where he knows the wickets and conditions like the back of his hand is another rebuff which leaves cricket marked by scars of unexplained whimsy. Amazingly, the off-spinner is not excessively perturbed.

Having previously gone on record as saying that selection not being in his domain, he would rather not worry about it, he has gone on to enjoy himself, analysing the choices and offering tips, suggesting how India can pull it off, which underlines a captaincy candidate, an additional irritant to someone comfortably chugging on. The Asia Cup squad happened to arrest eyes also because Jasprit Bumrah, playing against Ireland after a long, injury-related absence, did not really look like being back at his best. The very optimistic inclusion of some less than fit batsmen may or may not justify the superstars carrying on into the World Cup ~ said to be the extended objective ~ but the dumping of Ashwin has been an egregious error. The puppeteers are answerable to no one.