Ask a man of commerce about how cricket has evolved over the last few decades, and he might offer you this timeline: Test cricket is a game of the past; one-day cricket has been the big moneyspinner of the last two decades; Twenty20 cricket might be the future of the game. That is the Kal, Aaj aur Kal of cricket.

Coincidentally, India's selectors have recently started choosing teams that reflect this timeline. Our giants of the last decade, Anil Kumble and the middle-order firm of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman are confined to Test cricket. Sachin Tendulkar plays Tests and ODIs, but not T20. All of the new talent that we see is first tried out in the shorter forms of the game, and then exposed to Test cricket - if at all.

I don't see why this should be so.

Sure, Test cricket demands more of a player than ODIs or T20, so it would seem logical to try new players in those formats first. But by the same token, if a player is deemed not good enough to play one-day cricket, what makes him an automatic inclusion in the Test side? If one-day cricket benefits from younger players with higher fitness levels and more fire in the belly, why not try them in Test cricket as well?

My last column, written as the Test series was going on, spoke of the decline of our four middle-order batsmen and Anil Kumble. The rest of the series bore my point out. My happiest memories of watching cricket have come when those five gents have been at their best; those memories are now being tarnished by their struggles to hang on to their places in the side. It is time to think ahead.

Cricketers' careers, the way I see it, resemble a bell curve. In the early phase, through school and college and the early years of first-class cricket, there is a constant upswing and a steady learning curve. Then they get used to international cricket, and settle at more or less a plateau that represents them at their best, with minor ups and down for form. Then their ability begins to decline, and they start going downhill again. There is no way back up from there.

India's selectors need to ask themselves one important question: Are these five men facing a temporary dip in form, or have they started their downward descent? If it is the former, then it is worth giving players of such undoubted class a chance to rediscover their mojo. But if they conclude that these men will never again play like they used to at their peak, then we should look beyond them.

The question that the selectors probably ask themselves is this: Are these men worth their place in the side? But to me, an affirmative answer to that question does not settle the issue. Even if Senior Player X is currently of more value to the team than Junior Player Y, it could be argued that X is on the way down and Y is on the way up - and furthermore, that Y needs exposure to international cricket to continue his upward journey. That means that keeping a senior player in the side, when he is clearly on the decline, carries an opportunity cost equal to the progress a young player would have made given those same opportunities. Is that a cost we can afford?

If we played Bangladesh or New Zealand next, I would recommend 'resting' all five men and seeing how their replacements performed. If a couple of them came good (I'd have put my money on Rohit Sharma and S Badrinath), they could be retained in the next big series, and there would be less heartburn over the seniors who gave way in their place. We would also get a clearer picture of how ready our young players were.

As it happens, we play Australia next, and the selectors will be wary of messing with their superstars. If one or more of them could be persuaded to announce that this is their farewell series, much as Steve Waugh once did, we could see them off with nostalgia and, hopefully, even glory. They've missed a chance to go the Sunil Gavaskar way; they should spare us the pain of seeing them go the Kapil Dev way.

Amit Varma writes the blog India Uncut.