Major rejig in India’s national selection committee: Three new faces likely

A major rejig in the national selection committee is in the offing, including the possibility of a new Chairman.

Following the exit of Abey Kuruvilla as the West Zone selector in February, the vacancy is yet to be filled. The BCCI is also set to bring in two more new faces in the five-member committee.

“We will soon form a Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) which will follow the procedure and appoint the new selection committee,” BCCI Secretary Jay Shah said.

It is learned that South Zone selector Sunil Joshi and Central Zone selector Harvinder Singh will be on their way out and the new selectors could be in place by December. When the selection committee was last reconstituted with Chetan Sharma as the Chairman in December 2020, the BCCI made it clear in a statement that ‘the CAC will review the candidates after a one-year period and make the recommendations to the BCCI’.

Chief selector Chetan Sharma is expected to stay. Whether he remains the selector in Chief would depend upon who the other candidates in the fray are. As per the BCCI rules, the selector with the most Test caps is automatically elevated to the Chief selector position.

This rule has taken effect after the revision in the BCCI constitution following Lodha reforms and has come in for some criticism within sections of the board. Cricket is no longer played only with a sole focus on Test cricket and the need for a revamped selection committee is also an acknowledgment of the need to have selectors who are well-versed in the rhythms of T20 cricket. The team management – Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid have been actively involved in T20 selection procedures of late, with rest and rotation being employed as part of World Cup planning.

The BCCI constitution limits the term of any member of the cricket committee to five years. With that rule, East Zone selector Debashish Mohanty also has less than a year left in the job.

The other BCCI rule clubbing the junior and senior selection committee as one has resulted in a lack of continuity in the selection panel. When Sharma replaced Joshi as chairman for seniority, the former spinner had been only nine months in the job.

It also remains to be seen, if the CAC restructures the selection committee by factoring in the absence of a batter in the previous all-bowler selection panel.