Senior national selection committee sacked by BCCI, new committee to focus on split captaincy
ICC T20 World Cup 2022: With India failing to perform in the tournament, the BCCI has sacked the entire Chetan Sharma-led four-member senior national selection committee, while split captaincy would be the focus for the new committee.
FollowOn Friday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sacked the entire four-member senior national selection committee led by Chetan Sharma after the Indian cricket team failed to reach the final of the 2022 ICC T20 World Cup in Australia. On Friday, the BCCI invited applications for the position of national selectors (Senior Men). The last date for application is November 28. That Chetan will be sacked was first reported by PTI on October 18 after the BCCI Annual General Meeting (AGM), but it is learnt that his committee has not even been told about the sacking. The new chairman's job mandate has an interesting description of "selecting a captain in each format", suggesting that BCCI might be moving towards split captaincy soon.
Chetan (North zone), Harvinder Singh (Central Zone), Sunil Joshi (South Zone) and Debasish Mohanty (East Zone) have had the shortest stint as senior national selectors in recent times. Joshi and Harvinder were appointed national selectors in February 2020. After the AGM in January 2021, Chetan took over as chairman of selectors, with Mohanty and Kuruvilla joining him.
ALSO READ:Â IND vs NZ 2022-23, Wellington T20I: 'Guys are young by age, but not by experience' - Pandya
A senior national selector typically gets a four-year term subject to extension. There was no selector from West Zone after Abbey Kuruvilla's tenure ended. Once India lost in the semi-final of the T20WC, it was evident that Chetan was on borrowed time. During Chetan's tenure, India failed to reach the knock-out stage in the 2021 edition of T20WC and lost the ICC World Test Championships final last year to New Zealand.
"For Chetan to save his job, India needed to win the T20 World Cup. Nothing less could have saved him. But once, he was asked to select four squads at one go [New Zealand and Bangladesh away series] which was unprecedented, one could read between the lines," a BCCI insider, who has been tracking the developments, told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
ALSO READ:Â IND VS NZ 2022-23 - WELLINGTON T20I ABANDONED DUE TO RAIN; FORECAST NOT PROMISING FOR MOUNT MAUNGANUI
There are multiple reasons that the BCCI mandarins were unhappy with Chetan and his committee's shoddy performance. It is believed that Chetan was never assertive regarding certain decisions. Some of the reasons believed to have led to his sacking are: not being able to have a settled squad, allowing eight international captains in just one year with some select seniors turning workload management into a joke, picking KL Rahul after an eight-month hiatus from Twenty20 (T20) cricket, going on almost each India tour but not being able to create a decisive set of players in coordination with team management.
No tangible plan as to whether a 37-year-old senior like Shikhar Dhawan would be carried to the 2023 ICC World Cup when he would be above 38 is among the issues that have never been addressed. Chetan and his team could never reward the domestic or IPL performers and pick specialists across two T20WCs. Theirs is a committee under whom India has lost two T20WC games by ten wickets, something that has never happened earlier.
ALSO READ:Â 'Comparison with Akram is putting Arshdeep under a lot of pressure' - Rhodes
That Chetan's days were numbered was understood when he cut a lonely figure during the T20WC in Australia. He never travelled with the team and would stand at a fair distance from head coach Rahul Dravid at the end of bowlers' run-ups at the nets. The media in Australia never witnessed any significant conversation between the duo.
Â
New chairman to select captains in "each format"; report to Apex Council
In what could be a significant development, the new selection committee, as and when it takes to charge, will be mandated to choose captains across three formats, which effectively means that BCCI will be going for split captaincy.
ALSO READ:Â ICC T20I RANKINGS - SURYAKUMAR YADAV ASSERTS HIS DOMINANCE AT THE TOP
It could mean that Rohit will remain captain in One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and Test cricket for the time being. At the same time, Hardik Pandya will become the shortest format leader until the 2024 T20WC in the United States of America (USA) and the West Indies. The qualification criteria remained the same. The age cap is 60 years, and the incumbent must retire from active cricket for at least five years. He has to play at least seven Test matches or 30 First-Class (FC) games or 10 ODIs, along with 20 FC games.
The job domain has two key points, which had never been in any earlier selection committee advertisements -- prepare and provide evaluation reports of respective team performance to the Apex Council of BCCI every quarter and appoint a captain for the team in each format. Also, for the first time, the BCCI job domain description contains that the chairman must address the media regarding team-related queries.
(With inputs from PTI)
