It was widely reported in media (and acknowledged churlishly by our captain Dravid) that Sehwag was kept in the team for the final at his instance. The manager has already given his damning report to which Dravid had responded very uncharitably. Following is my ‘surmise’.

Suppose the cricketers sing contracts for endorsements and there is a bonus clause of collective appearance in the team. By this I mean if Dravid, Sehwag, Yuvraj and some other players endorsing a particular company are part of the playing eleven then the endorsement fees payable by the company would increase by a factor. To expound further, if only Dravid and Yuvraj are there in the team, each gets Rs. 10 Lakhs but if Dravid, Yuvraj and Sehwag there, each gets Rs. 15 lakhs. (And given the stakes involved, the companies are likely to keep this kind of clauses.) In this scenario, there is a perfectly rational reason to believe that those players would form a cliché and use their ‘persuasive or otherwise’ skills, weight, pull and influence to get the cliché included in the team so that the ‘receivables’ increase. And thus there would be a conflict of interest between the team’s interest and self interest.

Hence, if this kind of clause was there in those endorsement contracts then Dravid would have had the ‘non-cricketing’ reasons to use his influence to get Shewag included in the team. How can we be sure that this clause was not there and that whatever was done was purely for tactical cricketing reasons?