If you must, sack Laxman for his lousy batting performance, not because he is 37 years old
Recently when Alex Ferguson found the Manchester United team ridden with injury and conceding too many goals, he didn’t look at buying young football sensations to get the team’s handle back. Instead, it was the retired 37-year-old Paul Scholes who made a surprising return. There is no comparison in the fitness level required between the English Premier League and Test cricket (or between football and cricket), but looking at the clamour for VVS Laxman’s ejection, you would think that it is a crime to be 37 years old and a sportsperson.
His performance has been abysmal recently and it might be justified to drop him based on that. But that is not how it is always put. A number of ex-players, for example, club Laxman and Rahul Dravid (and while Sachin Tendulkar is not usually there, he is condemned by inference) in a category called ‘senior players’ and, a little like old models of cars, seek their phasing out. One such voice is of Sourav Ganguly, who had a decidedly different point of view when his own retirement was demanded for the same reason.
This hostility to age is not just in cricket alone. You will find CEOs boasting about how they manage to rope in young talent. You will find a businessman extolled because he made his first crore at a young age. You will have young politicians touted as the great cleansing hope of Indian politics. You will be continually told that youth by itself is a virtue. But it is not. In politics, those who go with the tag of young politicians are prime examples of nepotism. In cricket, we are sometimes too patient with them, to the detriment of the team. For example Parthiv Patel, who broke into the Indian team when he was just 17. His wicket-keeping turned out to be abysmal, but we hung on to the promise until there was no promise left.
The only virtue in sports is performance. Sachin Tendulkar too made his debut at 16 and has never had to bank on his youth for a place in the team. At 38, he still has a better average than most cricketers. Why would you want to think about his retirement? At some point, when the body gives way, he will go. Or like Laxman, his performance will drop, and he will be forced to. What’s the point in fulminating about age?
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