Ensure senior trio do not retire together: Ganguly to selectors
By IANSSaturday, January 15, 2011
KOLKATA - Former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly Saturday advised national selectors to take a lesson from the present predicament of the Australian team and ensure that the three senior pros in the Indian team retired in phases and not at one go.
Expressing confidence that batting greats Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman would continue in top flight cricket as long as they were in fine touch, India’s most successful captain said: “There is no age for retirement. It’s about performance.”
Ganguly retired form international cricket in November 2008 after the home series in Australia, and till today many of his admirers believe that the Kolkata boy was forced out of international cricket by a section of the Indian cricket board wrongly arguing that he was over the hill.
The Ganguly fans were in for another rude shock last week when none of the 10 Indian Premier League franchises bid for him during the auction for the fourth edition of the cash-rich league.
Making his first cricketing comment after the auction disappointment, Ganguly referred to the good showing of Tendulkar and Laxman in recent matches and hoped Dravid would also be among the runs soon. “Two of the three have done really, really well. And I expect the third one to do well very shortly… As he is too great a player.”
“I don’t see them retiring very soon as long as they are in form,” he said during an interaction with students at the Indian Statistical Institute here.
Reminding the selectors how Australian cricket has suffered after the exit of several big names at the same time, he said: “The selectors have to remember one thing… that they should ensure they (the three Indian greats) do not all go together. Because then there will be lot of void.
“Look at the Australians - in one series, (Justin) Langer, (Shane) Warne and (Glenn) McGrath retired. That created too much of a void. So Selectors have to be careful to make sure they go one at a time and not all together,” he said.
