Another interesting point which has been touched on here is that it is really not Sachin's job to decide whether he deserves his place in the team or not. There is a panel of selectors (I assume) who get paid to decide who makes the team. If they don't have the balls to drop him and he decides to play on til he dies of old age and his average drops below 30 then power to him.
Spot on !
This has been true all through his career. It is crazy how India is obsessed with retirement of active cricketers. Retirement of a sorts person should be discussed only when he announces it. Til such time that he is active and available, people should only discuss whether he should be included in the side or not. It's amazing how dropping a senior cricketer is considered such a great no-no while calling for his retirement is everyone's business. People are crazy for it should be exactly the other way around.
Another strange thought process in our part of the world is that once a senior cricketer, say Sachin, is dropped, that is the end of his career so it is better to call it "taking a brak or rest" . This is typical of the hypocrisy that defines us. There is no shame in being dropped and certainly none in doing your job as a selector and dropping someone you think needs to be dropped.
Finally people who are dropped or out of the international wide but have not announced their retirement, can be selected again if such an exigency arises. This has happened in the past though rarely in India. In England there are some amazing examples of success on sudden recall long after one has played what looked like his last international game. George Gunn is a prime example.
In India we had Jaisimha who was 'airlifted" with next to no practice all the way to Australia and played his finest Test innings in the very first Test he played even though he faded thereafter.
Pataudi Jr had stopped playing even club cricket when Lloyd's West Indians were murdering the Indian team and had one the first two tests with massive margins. The selectors approached Pataudi to lead the test side in the three Tests remaining. He was, naturally not willing and famously told them he won't reach double figures in all three Tests put together. The response of the selectors was equally memorable. They told him they wanted Pataudi the skipper - the batting was not what they were looking for from him.
His resistance broken, he joined the team and he was true to his word scoring next to nothing but under him India bounced back to wiin the next two tests and lost the final test for an amazing 3-2 series defeat.
But we digress . . .
