This is a unique tournament. The TVS Salve Challenger series has three teams (India Seniors, India 'A' and India 'B') and three coaches (John Wright, Sandeep Patil and Ashok Malhotra), but only one strategist.

John Geoffrey Wright, in tandem with the selectors, will decide the playing eleven of each team and its batting order and every other aspect of the game.

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"It is an important strategy for the upcoming New Zealand series and the Australian tour. Everything is being done with an eye on the two series. Anil [Kumble] and me have no say in the selection of the team," said Patil, coach of the India 'A' team that plays the India Seniors in the opening tie of the tournament on Wednesday.

According to Patil, the selectors will confer with Wright and decide the eleven in the morning.

"A lot of thinking has gone into the selection of the teams. The evenly matched sides will make all the games interesting," he said.

Patil, who quit as coach of Kenya after the World Cup in South Africa, will find himself out of work yet again come Sunday.

"I am going to be unemployed this Sunday. I wish I get a longer stint as coach of India 'A', but it is not going to be so easy.

"There are others like Ashok Malhotra and Madan Lal who are eyeing the job," he said.

Patil hopes the BCCI will give him some additional responsibility after the Challenger series.

Though Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir are Patil's choices for the openers' slots in the game against India Seniors, he believes that Wasim Jaffer and S Sriram also have a good chance of opening for India 'A'.

If India 'A' has four opening batsmen, India Seniors have an embarrassment of riches with five in Sourav Ganguly, Sanjay Bangar, Parthiv Patel, Akash Chopra and Reetinder Singh Sodhi.

Sodhi, left behind by his peers Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif, is on a new mission -- to open the batting in both forms of the game.

Opening for Punjab, he cracked an unbeaten 200 against Delhi at Patiala, in 1997, his first Ranji season.

Was it frustration of breaking through a packed middle-order that forced him to walk up to Wright and offer to open the innings?

"Not quite. I have opened the batting for Punjab regularly in one-dayers consistently and only because they think I hold the side together if there is a top-order collapse I am forced to bat in the middle," he says.

"I have told Punjab to let me open then there will be no collapse at all," he jokes.

These surely are strange days. A middle order batsman (VVS Laxman) is ready to open, a successful opener (Virender Sehwag) is ready to bat in the middle-order and an all-rounder is ready to take first strike.

Sodhi believes that his mental toughness will eventually see him don the national colours again.

"It hurts that I started off with these guys [Kaif and Yuvraj] and am left behind for no fault of mine. I am happy for them but it still hurts. Sar fir jata hai kabhi kabhi apne aap ko team se bahar dekhkar [Sometimes it is disappointing to be dropped from the team]," he says.

"It could be my day tomorrow. A hundred, a five-wicket haul is all it takes. Ussi khwab ke sahare jeeta hu main [I am living because of that dream]."

Either Wednesday or Thursday could be that day for Sodhi.

This tournament is much more than Sachin Tendulkar's return to competitive cricket after five months.