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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.

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