The Indian cricket Board may not have come out with a straight-faced answer after keeping Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly out of the Bangladesh tour. But legendary spinner Erapalli Prasanna believes it’s a “progressive decision” taken by the BCCI in the best interests of Indian cricket.“Well, it’s a progressive decision, that’s the best way of looking at it. With the two players rested, we have seen immediate positive results,” a candid Prasanna told The Indian Express here this afternoon. “Take the case of (Mahendra Singh) Dhoni batting at No 3. Had this decision not been taken, you wouldn’t have seen Dhoni playing well higher up the order. That batting slot was created only because the two players were not in the team.”Prasanna’s backing for the Board’s decision to ‘rest’ the two stalwart batsmen for the Bangladesh ODIs comes amidst widespread debate on the bold move, which was prompted as a shake-up after India’s World Cup debacle. The former off-spinner backs his opinion with this explanation. “Cricket is a simple game, and if you look at it from the point of view that players are picked and dropped on the basis of performance, then you will understand why such decisions are taken. If batsmen don’t score runs, which they are supposed to do, and if bowlers don’t take wickets, then it’s natural that questions will be asked,” explained Prasanna, who is in the city to train the under-19 spinners at the National Cricket Academy’s (NCA) zonal camp. The legendary off-spinner brought up the examples of Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag, both of whom are struggling to reclaim their positions in the Indian team. “We all know that Harbhajan is a great bowler and Sehwag is a great batsman. But if you find that a player is not scoring runs for a long period of time or if a bowler is just not taking enough wickets, then you just can’t carry on,” he said.And while the Board is on a coach-hunt ahead of India’s England tour slated for June-end to September, the player-turned-coach has an interesting suggestion for the BCCI. “Instead of going for one head coach, there should be two coaches, based on the team’s needs. For fitness-related aspects, the BCCI should have a foreign coach best suited for non-cricketing technical matters. And then there should be the main or cricketing coach, who should be an Indian,” Prasanna opined.
