PTI
  
 
ST KITTS, Jun 18: The axe might fall on VVS Laxman as India wriggle out of the holiday mode to concentrate on selection matters for the third Test against West Indies starting here on Thursday.
 
The Indians may have done well in dominating the West Indies in the first two Tests but the fact that they have not been able to force a victory in either must be rankling the team management.
 
National selector VB Chandrashekhar stoked the debate on selection with the observation that a third spinner is perhaps the need of the hour, which is a sign of changing times as Harbhajan Singh is seen as third option after Virender Sehwag made a strong impression in the two Tests.
 
Since only hints are dropped in the Indian cricket set-up, it must be presumed, at a certain risk of course, that either Laxman or Yuvraj will be rested. Yuvraj has better chances of being preferred to Laxman, although the reasons are hazy.
 
Laxman has played as significant innings as Yuvraj has in eight to nine months. Hints again must be used to draw conclusions -- since there is a pattern in obsession with youth under the Dravid-Chappell dispensation, Yuvraj, 'the prince charming', appears to be the frontrunner for the middle order slot.
 
Conclusions are hazardous about a group of men who decided to head for a break to St Maarten after the second Test but then poled their tents in St Kitts, a clear week before the match. The public stance that the hotel in St Maarten was not quite ready did not wash much water with those are used to Indian cricket's ways.
 
The suggestions in private by a few cricketers that it was coach Greg Chappell's way to put them on alert appeared more plausible.
 
Captain Rahul Dravid though kept asserting through the second Test he was serious about the break needed for the boys and as if to underline his point, he asked travelling crews of Indian television channels to excuse them as they headed for a day's break to Nevis, an adjoining island, on Saturday.
 
If speculation, in the absence of forthrightness from the team, is inescapable then Dravid's demand for a break must be decoded as an attempt to send across the message that too much cricket is being played and that the boys need break to freshen up for the challenges ahead.