The Indian cricket board (BCCI) decided to sack all four senior men’s national selectors following another disappointing T20 World Cup campaign. In a press release, BCCI secretary Jay Shah invited applications for five positions with November 28 being the deadline. The Chetan Sharma-led panel, including Debasis Mohanty, Harvinder Singh and Sunil Joshi, was one month shy of completing two years as selectors.
According to the new BCCI constitution, a person can serve in a cricket committee for up to five years. BCCI had not appointed anyone when Abey Kuruvilla’s tenure ended earlier this year. This move is the first step towards bringing about an impending overhaul in Indian cricket.
The job description for the incoming selectors clearly states: “Appoint captain for the team in each format.” While it is most likely that Rohit Sharma would continue as the ODI captain till the ODI World Cup at home next year, it will be interesting to see who the new set of selectors groom to lead in the other two formats.
Chetan and his team have been under severe scrutiny right through their term. When this committee was in charge, India lost the World Test Championship final, got knocked out of the 2021 T20 World Cup in the group stage, comfortably lost a Test series and ODI series in South Africa and failed to make the final of Asia Cup before being outplayed by England in the 2022 T20 World Cup semis.
The way the selection committee carried out a change in captaincy after Virat Kohli has also been criticised besides failing to pick a settled team in a year. Team leaders and selectors didn’t gel. According to sources, the team management was not happy with the way selectors operated.
