“If Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh have hunger to make a comeback left in them, then they will surely return to Indian team,” says former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly. Ganguly didn't rule out the possibility of even Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag making a comeback to the Indian squad. He feels that they still have 2-3 years of cricket left in them and if given a chance they will prove their mettle like they had been doing from the past decade or so.
India’s youth brigade including Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been doing pretty well for India in the past six months or so, while the poor form of senior cricketers doesn’t make the life of these senior pros any easier.
Ganguly was quoted by The Times of India saying, "No player is completely out of the team. In 2011, the Indian team looked incomplete without these players. And now they are out of the team. So you cannot say what will happen tomorrow."
"They are all very good players. They have won India World Cup, Test matches, Test series. So if they have hunger inside them, they can surely be back. They just need to focus on cricket, train hard, be fit and make a comeback.
Ganguly hailed all these veterans who has been out of favour from quite a sometime and was quoted by DNA saying, "They are all great players. Sehwag is one of the greatest as an opener in Indian cricket. Zaheer is closing in on 300 wickets. Look at the performance of Yuvraj Singh in World Cups, be it 2007 or 2011. He has been the best. So you can't keep such players out for a long time. They would want to do better than what they have already done," he added.
Apart from that, Dada also praised the decision of Gautam Gambhir of going and playing in county which will surely help in keeping him in good shape and if he performs well then he can surely make a comeback to the fold. Ganguly wants him to play as match matches as possible to play for Essex and score heaps of runs so that he can get his confidence back which was lacking in his batting before he was shown the doors from the team.
He was quoted by Hindustan Times saying, "It's a good decision, because it's an off season in India. And at this age, he should play cricket, as much cricket as possible, and find form."
The 41-year-old concluded, "He is only 30 now. So there is still 10 years of cricket left in him. Every player goes through a rough patch. I hope he learns from this and plays some good cricket to stage a comeback.”