Wrist spin and the No.4 - India's two interconnected ODI projects

As ever, India's hopes for the next major ODI silverware finds itself wrapped up in fresh approaches, a new game plan and a rejigged mindset. Taking one game at a time is largely a cliche thrown around in press conference rooms. For most parts, teams are picked with a consideration for the future as well as the present. In a mostly-settled team that should see at least eight or nine members of the current set-up starting the next World Cup, India find themselves executing two concurrent projects to soft commit on a possible XI for England 2019.

This necessary and deceptively complex juggling act is a bit like solving simultaneous equations. The two unknowns are more intricately interconnected than would meet the eye. The first of those, fielding two wrist spinners, is a classic reaction to the changing demands of ODI cricket. There is a sense of acceptance around the format that bowlers will get hit. Dot. They might as well take a couple of batsmen down with them in the process. So India have slowly shoved R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja away, using the packed Test calendar as a shield. This has enabled them to play both types of the wrist spinner - a right-armer and a left-armer - for greater variety and added guile. The early signs are encouraging but in no ways, offer conclusive proof that the experiment will survive the test of time.

The other is a curiously unending search for a permanent No. 4 - a merry-go-round so eternal that the abandoned hulks of previous eras still harbour hopes for the carousel to turn their way. Manish Pandey and KL Rahul currently lead that race, but neither is close to marking that territory as his own. Rahul had dibs in Sri Lanka while Pandey has gotten the right to refusal against Australia. Curiously enough, India were looking for a No.4 the last time Australia were here for an ODI series, in 2013. Then project Raina was gathering steam. That plan crashed and burned with every Mitchell Johnson bumper. Ambati Rayudu, for long India's first choice in every second-string side, then came close to sealing a spot in the main XI, to a point where even Virat Kohli considered dropping himself a spot down in November 2014.

Ajinkya Rahane held it next during World Cup 2015 and in the immediate aftermath of the semifinal exit, but struggled, in the eyes of MS Dhoni, to turn strike over on slower pitches. He is now a back-up opener. Dinesh Karthik comes knocking once every Champions Trophy warm-up game and disappears thereafter. The romantic return of Yuvraj Singh earlier in the year always seemed a more stop-gap solution for the Champions Trophy defence. And so, now India have completed a full circle and look no closer to solving the mystery. In fact, they've now used six players at No.4 in 15 innings since the