Ajit Agarkar ‘s tenure as BCCI chief selector, which started in 2023, will end soon. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia has said that after October 4, the board will officially declare its next course of action. Agarkar was named the BCCI chief selector in July 2023.
Since then, India reached the final of an ODI World Cup, won two T20 World Cups, and also lifted the Asia Cup and the Champions Trophy. Yet, Agarkar’s tenure also saw the retirements of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma (from T20Is and Tests) and Ravichandran Ashwin (from all formats). Players like Mohammed Shami have also found themselves sidelined during his tenure.
Indian cricket great Sunil Gavaskar said that, as per reports, the teams for India’s New Zealand tour in October will be picked by the new BCCI chief selector. Parthiv Patel and Pragyan Ojha have been speculated to be the front-runners for the BCCI chief selector’s role.
Thankfully, it did not, for most guys knew I was upfront with them and that I would have told them before the media got to hear about the official announcement. “Whoever is going to be the next Chairman, and however great or popular a player he may have been during his playing days, when he has to hang up his boots after his term, he will find there are more minuses, however wrongly perceived, than pluses against his name,” he wrote. “It’s happened to me so many times that it’s not funny, for it could have spoilt friendships with teammates.
“It’s not certain whether, nowadays, the skipper joins the selectors in choosing the team, but in the earlier days, when the skipper was co-opted to the selection committee, albeit without a vote, it was common practice for some of the selectors to come out of the meeting and ‘coochie-coo’ with their favourite media persons and blame the captain for the unpopular picks and omissions from the team.
