By BV Swagath
India is going to play two home Test Series against New Zealand and England in the coming days. As we all know over the years that it’s not too challenging for the Indian batsmen to play on their home pitches. With Rahul Dravid retiring after an illustrious career, his absence will give vacancy to many of the deserving youngsters, who have been waiting all along to cement their place in the Test Side.
Besides Dravid, there is every possibility that India will be seeing veterans Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman easing out from Test Cricket. Sachin Tendulkar despite being 39 years of age still moves his feet well and shows good reflexes in playing the fastest of bowlers. Tendulkar has also managed to be quick on the field and also with his running between the wickets. As a matter of fact, the Little Master should be fit enough to play Test Cricket for a minimum of two years.
As far as VVS Laxman is concerned, I think it’s the right time to end his career. He is 37 years old and a huge liability on the field. Laxman has to field only in catching positions in the inner ring. There is nothing much he contributes on the field except for being a safe catcher say in the slips. I guess the Selectors have given him enough opportunities – two full tours of England and Australia where he was supposed to score runs but failed to do so. Laxman certainly has contributed his bit in the failure of Team India in the last two overseas tours by not scoring even a single century in the last 16 innings overseas!
It’s time that the Selectors stop being sentimental and emotional. A look at Laxman’s statistics suggest that he is just about 1200 runs or so short of completing 10000 runs in Test Cricket. Everyone were satisfied with the timing of Rahul Dravid’s retirement as The Wall was past his prime and was not that good anymore with his reflexes. Lots of people had expected Laxman to follow Dravid’s footsteps but looks like the former has his eyes on completing 10000 Test runs!
I wonder what use it is to Indian Cricket to still have VVS Laxman in the team. Even if he scores big in the coming Series, how does it help Indian Cricket in the long term? Had he got his big scores in England and Australia, things would have been much better than those embarrassing cleansweeps.
Well there are a couple of soft Test Series coming up at home. The first one is against a weak New Zealand team that really lacks world class players. After this, India host England for a Test Series. Yes India would desperately look to make up for their cleansweep defeat against them but one thing is sure that England will not be as powerful as they are back home. Their battery of pace attack is bound to struggle on the slow Indian pitches. For these reasons, I believe this is the perfect time to give the youngsters the opportunity to play Test Cricket as they hold the future of Indian Cricket for the next decade or so.
India has a long waiting list of talented batsmen who are good enough to play Test Cricket and need a longer run like Cheteshwar Pujara, S Badrinath, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Manoj Tiwary, Abhinav Mukund etc. Some of these young men need lots of exposure in Test Cricket so that they can serve the country the same way the likes of Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly and others have done in the past.
