November 07, 2007	Wednesday	Shawwal 25, 1428

MUMBAI, Nov 6: Sachin Tendulkar said on Tuesday he did not want to take on the job of India’s Test captain again at present.“Tendulkar has conveyed to Sharad Pawar (board president) that he was not in a position to accept the captaincy of the Indian team for the Tests,” the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) secretary Niranjan Shah said in a statement.

Indian selectors are due to name Rahul Dravid’s successor as Test captain on Thursday.

Batting great Tendulkar, 34, and one-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were in the frame for the job after Dravid relinquished the post two months ago, saying he wanted to focus on his batting.

“He (Tendulkar) was of the view that presently the Indian team was doing extremely well and the board must think of appointing a younger person as the captain looking at the future of the team,” the statement added.

Tendulkar has led India twice before without much success.

“I don’t feel right about it at the moment,” Tendulkar was quoted as saying by the CNN-IBN news channel.

Selectors, who postponed a decision on the captaincy last month, must now decide whether to hand the Test reins to Dhoni, 26, who led a young team to success at the Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa.Keeper-batsman Dhoni’s leadership abilities were lauded during the home series against Australia which the visitors won 4-2 but he has played in just 20 Tests since his debut in December 2005.

But the selectors were undecided on Tuesday whether to offer the Test captaincy to Dhoni.

“We have not made up our minds, nothing is final yet,” one of the five selectors said.

The selection committee is scheduled to meet in Mohali on Thursday to pick a successor to Dravid, who unexpectedly stepped down in September for unspecified reasons.

India hosts Pakistan for three Tests starting later this month and plays four Tests in Australia from December before another home series against South Africa in March.

Tendulkar served two stints as captain between 1996 and 2000 before he voluntarily quit in March 2000 saying he wanted to concentrate on his batting.

Under him, India won four of 25 Tests with nine losses and 13 draws.

The Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper on Tuesday quoted unnamed cricket board sources as saying that Tendulkar had declined to become captain and the selectors were set to pick Dhoni for the Tests.

“My understanding is that Sachin is not keen and has made that known to some people,” the source was quoted as saying by the paper.

“So Dhoni looks the favourite. It’s a plus that he is already the one-day and Twenty20 captain.”

Tendulkar, a 17-year veteran at the highest level, has 11,150 runs in 140 Tests at 54.92 with a world record 37 centuries.

Former Australian captain Greg Chappell, who quit as India’s coach in April, said Dhoni may be too inexperienced for the Test captaincy.

“He (Dhoni) is doing his apprenticeship in the limited-over forms of the game,” Chappell told Times Now news channel on Tuesday. “Probably another 12 months or more I think before he is perhaps ready for all three of them.

“A tour of Australia behind him will just finish him off nicely as a cricketer and as a potential leader,” he said.

India has not selected Chappell’s replacement and has temporarily given the coaching job to former first-class batsman Lalchand Rajput.—Agencies