Daily Times

MUMBAI: Chetan Sharma has been reappointed as the chairman of the Indian cricket board’s (BCCI) national men’s senior selection committee. Chetan, who was in the same position in the previous selection committee, which had been sacked in November last year, will have Shiv Sunder Das, Salil Ankola, Subroto Banerjee and S Sharath as colleagues in the new panel. The five men were chosen by the BCCI’s cricket advisory committee of Ashok Malhotra, Sulakshana Naik and Jatin Paranjape after “around 600 applications” came in response to a BCCI advertisement for the positions. The need to appoint a fresh committee came up after the BCCI removed the earlier panel on November 18 last year — the advertisement was published on the BCCI’s website the same day — not long after India were eliminated in the semi-final of the men’s T20 World Cup.

Though the panel was removed, they continued to select the India men’s national teams for the limited-overs series in New Zealand, the ODI and Test tour of Bangladesh and then the ongoing limited-overs series at home against Sri Lanka in the absence of a new committee. It was understood that the panel, led by Chetan, had been given an extension until the end of 2022 and, along with picking the national squads, had also been tasked with tracking the Ranji Trophy matches till the end of the year.

Then, last week, in perhaps a big indication that Chetan might not be replaced — even if the others were — he was part of the BCCI’s review meeting of India’s roadmap to the 2023 ODI World Cup along with Rahul Dravid, the head coach, Rohit Sharma, the all-format captain, and VVS Laxman, the National Cricket Academy chief, as well as top BCCI functionaries. The term for the selection panel is typically four years, but they are up for renewal every year.
The CAC, meanwhile, was put in place on January 1 to interview the applicants, prepare a shortlist of candidates, and send the BCCI its recommendations, on the basis of which the five-member panel has now been put in place. The latest panel has a combined experienced of 48 Test matches and 95 ODIs. Chetan and Das have both played 23 Tests each, while Ankola and Banerjee played one each. Chetan also played 65 ODIs; Ankola, Banerjee and Das played 20, six and four apiece. Sharath, a domestic great who played 139 first-class matches and scored 8700 runs in the format at an average of 51.17, never played for India.