Skip to main content

The Fab Five .....and the rise of Dhoni

All the ruckus around how the Fab Four (Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman) plus Kumble are finished and showed be shown the door en masse is so typical of the Indian cricket fans and media. This is not a case in their defence but I think the issue needs to be looked at logically and the right cricketing decision made.

Of the five, Tendulkar is the only one who remains in the ODI team and I think its time he realised that since he's not going to play in the 2011 World Cup, this is as good a time as any to retire from ODIs. Playing ODIs can only lead to more injuries for him and more importantly he really doesn't have anything left to achieve in that format of the game.

The Test team is an entirely different kettle of fish though, for a couple of reasons. One, the next series is against the Aussies, which is no time to make wholesale changes to the team. Secondly, even after the series against Australia, I think at least Tendulkar and Laxman need to be in the Test team for a year or two. None of the youngsters in line to replace these guys has sufficient long-duration game experience and if the middle-order was completely replaced all at once it would be like taking off all four wheels of a car. Plus, Tendulkar and Laxman are still young enough and performing well enough to be there rightfully. Dravid and Ganguly on the other hand look jaded and tired and I would hate to see them struggling on and making dents into the legacies they'll leave behind. The best thing for them to do would be to announce their retirements after the Australia series so they can be given a send-off like Gavaskar and not Kapil Dev.

Which leaves us with Kumble. The captaincy gave a new lease of life to Kumble but now with Dhoni appearing totally ready (at least from a captaincy and keeping standpoint) to take the Test leadership over, India's best bowler ever should retire. Again, ideally right after the Australia Test series this autumn. His bowling totally lacks bite these days and moreover, unlike middle-order batsmen, the only way to get spinners ready for Test cricket is by making them play it. The series against England, Pakistan and New Zealand are ideal opportunities to see if Piyush Chawla and Pragyan Ojha have got it in them to be India's next matchwinning spinners.

This transition will also be an important time for Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He is unquestionably India's most valuable ODI and T20 player because of his batting and his leadership. In Test match cricket though, he has struggled and the only reason he's still the first choice wicket-keeper is because the next two guys in line (Dinesh Karthik and Parthiv Patel) haven't been able to do enough. The captaincy of the Test team will hopefully be the trigger for Dhoni to replicate the impact he has had on the limited-overs team. Its interesting how his rise in the Indian ranks has mirrored the decline of the Fab Five. Unlike them, he's not a naturally gifted cricketer nor is he from a big city with an established cricketing culture. He's yet to make a significant impact in Test cricket and in any other country, he would be just another cricketer rather than the superstar he is in India. But such is the fervour with which limited-overs cricket is followed in India. Hopefully Dhoni has the desire to do as well in Test cricket and leave a legacy behind that at least compares with Laxman and Ganguly's, if not Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble (who along with Gavaskar and Kapil Dev would rank as India's five best cricketers of all-time). The next five years will tell.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When reactions lack proportion

There's been much brouhaha over India's rapid descent into one-sided football scorelines and becoming what some would term "the world's worst overseas team". And while there's some logic to the cries for wholesale changes ,  revamping the team , and attitude problems , much of it is over the top. About the only two sensible pieces I have read recently are by Ganguly and Siddhartha Vaidyanathan questioning the lack of spirit and fight shown by the team. What's most surprising to me is that some people seem to think that the team (which was ranked #1 till recently and won the World Cup less than a year back) is suddenly a pile of dung. This when there are still several pieces of information (numbers of course) that have either been ignored or not analysed clearly at all. So here's an attempt to balance the books a little. Consider the following - 1) India's overseas record in 5 year segments roughly over the last two decades is as below: 199
Post a Comment
Read more

Kohli's team on the way to greatness?

Growing up (from a cricket watching perspective) in the 1990s, I am terribly unused to Test cricket being the format in which the Indian team is most successful and looking like potential world-beaters. Still early days, but this is exactly the way things seem headed currently for Kohli and his men. Since Jan 2015 (when Kohli took over as full time captain), India's record reads: P 21, W 14, L 1, D 6. The absurd W/L ratio will of course not last and many critics will point to the fact that most of the victories have come at home. Teams can however only overcome the opposition they are faced with and so far India have ticked off the overseas boxes they have been faced with (in Sri Lanka and the West Indies). And at home they have been utterly dominant, destroying everyone they've met. But most hearteningly, it's the way they have battled back from adversity that builds the most promise for the future. Too often in even the recent past (let alone the 1990s), Indian teams
Post a Comment
Read more

Old dog, new tricks?

After Virat Kohli's stupendously successful start as India captain (admittedly in a different format), the cries for Dhoni to be replaced as captain for the shorter formats will undoubtedly renew again. And while Kohli might be ready to take over, I think India still have a lot to gain from Dhoni the batsman and captain at the Champions Trophy in England next year. Aside from the fact that we are not exactly rolling in good new limited overs keeper-batsmen and couldn't therefore find an adequate replacement at short notice, Dhoni has looked fitter and fresher since he gave up Test cricket. He has also, in a distinct departure from the recent past, looked keen to get stuck into situations tactically and work out ways to win with newer players. The Zimbabwe tour was a pretty light weight test but it definitely started there and its carried on into the current series against New Zealand. Most hearteningly, he has not been stubborn about his own waning skills as a batsman and
Post a Comment
Read more