Forever young

By John Cheeran
Experience.
National selectors' excuse to bring back Sourav Ganguly into the Indian team for Pakistan tour was experience. India needs the experience of a seasoned player like Ganguly in a crucial away engagement like the Pakistan tour.
Really...Let's agree on that point for a minute.
And then consider what was this experienced player's contribution when India won the Test series in Pakistan during the last visit.
Records tell us that Rahul Dravid led India in the first two Tests. India won the first Test, Pakistan won the next one.
Ganguly did not play in the first two Tests. India did not require Ganguly's presence for the final Test especially since Yuvraj Singh hit a brilliant century in the second Test which, however, India lost.
An injured Ganguly rushed from the comforts of his Behala residence to play in the final Test. That threw up a problem for the team management in where to accommodate the now run away, now comeback skipper Ganguly.
Ganguly eventually played (77) but then the Test was won thanks to Dravid's splendidInnings of 270.
So what was Ganguly's contribution during the last series?
Is that experience all about?
Experience should be administered in small doses in sports. Sport, by its very nature offers its playing fields to the youth of this world.
People want to see not the contemporary Sachin Tendulkar but a Tendulkar who blazed the cricket world with his dazzling stroke play ten years ago.
Sport needs young minds, young hearts and young feet. Experience is good in statecraft and witchcraft but not when faced with tear-away fast bowlers.
Sport has its own yardsticks. It would be foolish to measure excellence in sport by the rulebook of day-to-day life.
In modern day tennis, you are considered a veteran by the time you reach 20.
Modern day sport is a place where you would like to inherit the youth of your son in exchange for your experience.
Quite like Yayati's father. Ganguly, go and read the puranas.