Cricket coaches aren’t exactly knocking on the door of Indian cricket, and captains are moving away like vegetarians might from a steak house. There has to be a problem even if we are shy of acknowledging it. You must pick captains and coaches from as wide a pool as possible, not from among those that are left. After all, this is meant to be a post of honour. We are not asking people to be Benazir Bhutto’s bodyguards.

So are we going to ask people to put their hands up or are we going to yank someone’s hand up and say “there, you!” Asking Sachin Tendulkar to be captain was a mistake and while he has taken the right decision, we now need to find someone else. And unlike finding a coach where meetings, decisions and right choices can be delayed till the glaciers move another couple of inches or till the Left finds the next reason to hold the government to ransom, a captain has to be found soon enough.

Very little has changed since the day Mahendra Singh Dhoni was appointed the captain of the one-day team. It was clear as daylight that day that the next captain of the test team could only come from a shortlist of three: Dhoni himself and the two seniors who weren’t playing one-day cricket: V.V.S. Laxman and Anil Kumble. Each of those three has much to offer and that would have been a good debate in itself. Dhoni, the brave and impressive generation next man; Kumble, tough as nails with a very clear vision of what aggressive is as opposed to what it is made to look like; and Laxman, a thoughtful, intelligent man who reads the game and people well.

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