Is it time for Team India to retire the Big 3?

Every country and every sport has its fair share of greats who seem absolutely indispensable and whose services are continued way beyond their sell-by date, when in fact the administration should be concentrating on the future.

It is always a better idea to thank the greats, honour them and earnestly go about building a team of tomorrow.

So has that day come with the three batting greats of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman all have to be thanked, honoured and Test cricket has to move on without them?

Dravid will play the Perth Test as a 39-year-old and Sachin will also turn 39 a few months later. Laxman will be 37 later in the year.

For the record, the legendary Sunil Gavaskar retired at the age of 37.

Either way you lose…

By all indications, Indian Test cricket will collapse if the Big 3 retire. However, we have crashed to an abysmal six consecutive defeats on foreign soil, so what could be more humiliating than that.

In fact we are in a rare lose-lose situation.

If we get whitewashed again, then it’ll be a 0-8 counting the England tour. If we have a miracle and win the remaining two Tests, then it’ll be still 2-2. That’s also really bad as this is the same team which was beaten at home by South Africa 2-1 and thrashed by England 3-1.

Even New Zealand held them to a 1-1 series draw in the just concluded series.

On a pitch where we could take just four Australian wickets, the Big 3 lost their six wickets across both innings for a combined total of less than half of the Australian first innings score.

What we won without them…

In fact till 2007, it seemed that the whole of Indian cricket would collapse without them. But when the Big 3 were rested for the first time ever (along with Sourav Ganguly) we won the T20 World Cup. In the 2011 World Cup win, there were no Dravid and no Laxman. While Tendulkar was a key figure, it was Yuvraj Singh who emerged as the man of the series.

Even in the final, the partnerships of Gautam Gambhir, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli won us the title in the end.

We have done amazingly well without them in the shorter formats of the game and maybe it's time to look at the longer format too.

Look at Australia…

Batsman Greg Chappell (7110 Test runs), fast bowler Dennis Lillee (355 Test wickets) and wicketkeeper Rod Marsh (355 Test catches/stumpings) all retired together in January 1984, plunging Australian cricket into crisis.

Interestingly Chappell was just 35 years old and could have easily gone to play 100 Tests and have a crack at Don Bradman’s record of 29 Test centuries, but decided not to do so.

What's the result? Australia won the World Cup in 1987. After that they changed their whole long-term strategy and in the 1990s became supreme world champions in both formats of the game.

Wasting talent…

In fact for years, all other new Indian batting talent has been wasted. Along with Ganguly, the positions from No. 3 to 6 had been blocked for years. Only when Ganguly retired was the position of No. 6 opened up. But even that has been more of a Russian roulette played by the likes of Yuvraj, Suresh Raina and Kohli.

On the England tour, Raina hit a fine fighting 78 at Lord's, but was still dropped despite the fact that the entire batting order with the exception of Dravid had failed.

Cheteshwar Pujara debuted with a fine 72 which helped us chase 207 against Australia in the fourth innings. He was given just two more Tests and done away with.

Murali Vijay has been in and out of the team. Abhinav Mukund hit three 40s on foreign soil and yet didn't get a single Test on home soil, where everyone gets a chance to belt centuries and cement their place in the team.

So the time has probably come when the BCCI has to look to a long-term Test strategy and ensure that at least 2-3 newcomers play in every Test series from now on to secure the future.

If we keep talking of things like "fast pitches", "batting collapses" and "weak bowling" without nurturing newer and newer batting talent, then the future of Indian Test cricket will become even more grim than it appears now.

Also see: India's biggest Test crisis ever

The author is a Bangalore-based journalist and blogger. He blogs at http://sunilrajguru.com/