India right now is in transition stage. Their main players have just retired and it’ll take some time to find and groom players to fill their places. The selectors need to be given some time to find apt replacements for the fab four— Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman—and bowling greats like Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath. These were fantastic players but remember even they took some time to find their feet in international cricket. Even the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, made it big in 1992 because of a chance opportunity to open the innings even though he made his debut in 1989. That’s a good 4 years. The bottom line is that the selectors and the captain need to be given some time to re-build the team and take it back to its original glory.
Even though I believe that it will take some time for the youngsters to find their feet in international cricket, some like Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara have shown signs of becoming great international cricketers. Both batsmen scored a lot of runs last year and have cemented their place in the Indian team. Apart from these two, young batsman Rohit Sharma also has a lot of promise but he has failed to deliver consistently. On the bowling front, Umesh Yadav, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar have shown the promise. However, the Indian bowlers lack the necessary fitness and are injured very often. Right now, 2 out of the five bowlers mentioned above are injured. If these bowlers are groomed well and they work upon their fitness, Indian team may soon have a very good bowling line-up. All in all, youngsters have shown that they have it in them to play well at the international level but their performances have been inconsistent and injuries seem to be a major roadblock in the players improvement. If the captain and the selectors show faith in the current crop of youngsters, I believe the results should begin to show by the end of this year. Along all this the senior players need to keep performing and helping out the newcomers. I see this happening in the Indian selection process and by early next year the Indian Cricket Team should be soon back to its glorious ways.
