KDK played majority (14 out of 21) of his tests as a middle order batsman, so let's not ignore that and he averages 20 something in that.
And no I didn't ignore Kaif's 91 vs. England, it is just that it is irrelevant here in the discussion. that match was played in mar 2006 and because of that performance he made it to the June WI tour where he performed poorly and was dropped rightly so after the tour.
Kartik played enough tests to show that he can't replace Kumble or even Harbhajan. Powar played 2 tests vs, Bangladesh, he was okay, nothing stellar, neither was Chawla. And I dont understand how I am on thin grounds, you dont drop your best spinner to give extended runs to your youngsters. This is international test cricket we are talking about, not some mindless series in timbuktu, you have to earn the position and make the best of oportunities given to you.
And they wont until someone is dropped or someone retires. Unless their form is really poor for an extended period of time, you dont drop proven players like Sachin, Dravid, VVS, Kumble and Ganguly to give some youngsters extended run. Look at Australia there Lehman, Hussey, Clark, Martyn, Hayden etc had to wait for years before they got their youngsters a extended run.
Yes very few players become world beaters, and that's why you dont replace the proven world beaters in your team with the youngsters for the sake of giving chance.
Karthik's a wicketkeeper batsman - he was never seen as a frontline replacement for the so-called big 4 so why you are bringing his numbers into here - I have no idea.
Why is Kaif's 91 irrelevant ? That was part of a contiguous series of matches that he played including the series in the WI. And considering the circumstances that was played in - highly relevant.
And how was his performance in the Windies poor ? Inconsistent maybe but way overboard calling it poor especially considering the last two failures came on a pitch that pretty much every batsman barring Dravid who played probably played two of his best test innings failed.
Kaif wasn't dropped because his performance was poor per se - he was dropped because Ganguly had to be in the team no matter what.
The world beaters have hardly been churning out consistent performances over a sustained period now. Dravid has been averaging around 30 for two years now . You honestly think that is acceptable ?
Ganguly has never been particularly good against bowling attacks of decent quality and yet he was picked instead of Kaif, a bloke who had shown real promise against some strong attacks.
Ganguly's numbers may look ok since his recall - but his numbers have been heavily padded by performances against weak attacks.
Tendulkar has been averaging under 40 since 2006 and has probably had only 1 decent series - v AUs - in that time. He is far from a reliable batsman these days.
If India's senior pros were still performing, they'd have the results to show for it. BUT they don't. Its pretty simple.
In the last 3 years, India have only managed to draw home series against RSA, PAK and Eng - blew a golden opportunity to beat RSA at home and muffed up a chance to draw away in Australia when all they had to do was bat for two sessions.
Not to mention the latest debacle in Sri Lanka.
And the batting is largely to blame for most of those results.
As for the spinners, yes this is probably not as problematic an area as the batting....however if you were going to judge players on the basis of two contiguous tests at the start of their career, Harbhajan would never have played test cricket because he was far from stellar at the start of his career !
.... aren't we talking abt the recent performances 