MS Dhoni shouldn't have retired from Test cricket so early, laments Sunil Gavaskar

New Delhi, Jan 17: Former India captain and legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar badly misses the presence of seasoned campaigner Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the Indian dressing room during as the latter is no more part of the Test side.

Gavaskar feels MS Dhoni's presence as a senior player could have been quite handy for the teammates during the challenging series of South Africa. The cricketer-turned-commentator also misses Dhoni the wicketkeeper as the 36-year-old stumper is still one of the best in the limited-overs format.

Gavaskar is unimpressed with current India wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel's glovework behind the stumps during the second Test match against South Africa. Parthiv was picked up in the playing eleven after regular Test stumper Wriddhiman Saha developed niggle in his leg.

Patel, the pint-sized wicketkeeper from Gujarat, hasn't had a good outing with the gloves in this game as he missed to take a few catches which proved to be fatal for the visitors in the second Test. Some of those missed chances took the game away from India's hands for fielding has been one department where South Africa have left their opponents far behind in the closely-fought contest.

While analysing India's missed chances from behind the stumps, Gavaskar said during an analysis show on Sony Ten 1 TV ahead of fourth day's play in Centurion, "If MSD [Dhoni] wanted to carry on, he could have carried on. Clearly, I think he might have had too much of captaincy [burden]. I would have actually liked him to maybe give up captaincy and still stay in the team as wicketkeeper-batsman because his advice in the dressing room would have been invaluable. Maybe he thought that the best course for him was to not to be there."

Dhoni retired from Tests after playing a Test match against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2014. He had played 90 Tests by then and effected 256 catches and 38 stumpings in the longer format apart from scoring 4876 runs at an average of 38.09.

Due to a few bad moves from captain Kohli at crunch situations in the match and the inconsistency of the present glovesman behind the stumps that perhaps forced Gavaskar to regret Dhoni's absence from the larger format of the game.

Dhoni, who is part of the limited-overs squad, is present on the field to give his valuable suggestions to his successor Kohli and their combination has done wonders for the team as far as their success in limited-overs' is concerned.

Gavaskar lamented that the team has missed the services of their regular Test wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha.

"Wriddhiman Saha has been missed. There is no question about it. His keeping is at an altogether different level," Gavaskar said.

"Parthiv Patel though is a competitive wicketkeeper. He is a little fighter as we can see when he gets the bat in his hand. However, sometimes with the gloves, he can have a little bit of an issue", Gavaskar added.

"We saw with that missed opportunity [Elgar on Day 3]. If we had gone for it and dropped it, then there would have been no issues. But not going for a catch does make you feel a little bit disappointed."

Saha has been ruled out of remainder of the series and Tamil Nadu stumper Dinesh Karthik as been sent in as a replacement for Saha for the third and final Test by the BCCI.