From all indications, BCCI senior chief selector Ajit Agarkar has chaired his last selection committee meeting. A little over a week back, the Agarkar-led panel picked the national squads to do duty against West Indies in three One-Day Internationals and five Twenty20 Internationals, apart from naming the Rest of India side to take on Ranji Trophy champions Jammu & Kashmir in the Irani Cup.
It is widely perceived that Rohit has inadvertently become the primary reason for Agarkar choosing, as is being touted, not to seek an extension to his term as chairman of selectors when his tenure ends early next week. The honeymoon period lasted for a fair while, it can’t be disputed. In some ways, that victory was to prove a decisive moment in Indian cricket, and not necessarily for the reasons one might consider organic or positive. Rohit missed the first game, victory in Perth, as he was away on paternity leave, and when he rejoined the team, his form deserted him summarily. Ashwin retired midway through the series, Rohit dropped himself for the final game in Sydney owing to poor form and Kohli’s tour unravelled dramatically after an unbeaten second-innings hundred in Perth as he unerringly found the slip cordon time after time. If Agarkar does bow out, his report card will be a mixed bag.
Among those named in the ODI squad was Rohit Sharma, the former captain whose future has been needlessly put under the microscope over the last 12 months. Under Rohit, India charged through to the final of the home 50-over World Cup in 2023 before coming a cropper in the title round against Australia, then mounted a flawless, unbeaten campaign in the Americas as they won a second T20 World Cup crown in Bridgetown in June 2024. Within months of that debacle, the celebrated trio had played its last Tests at different times on the subsequent tour of Australia, which India lost 1-3. During his 38-month tenure, India won two T20 World Cups, two Asia Cups (one each in the 50- and the 20-over formats) and made it to the final of the 50-over World Cup at home. But their Test record has been abysmal – home series routs by New Zealand and South Africa (2-0 last November), and an away series loss to Australia in 2024-25 (1-3) completely cancel out all else, including a 1-0 victory in Sri Lanka last month.
There have been reports of a breakdown in communication between Agarkar and Laxman, the head of the Centre of Excellence, especially when it comes to picking India ‘A’ squads. The CoE has chalked out long-standing pathways to prepare the next set of emerging talent for international cricket, but the selection panel has often chosen to override that pathway and thrust established Indian Test players into the mix, ostensibly for match practice, even in familiar home conditions. It is reliably learnt that Laxman wasn’t even consulted when the selectors picked the squad for the Asian Games though it was clear many months back that he would be the coach in Aichi-Nagoya. So much for transparency and openness isn’t a quip without substance.
Whoever the new chairman is — for now, the needle points in the direction of former India stumper Parthiv Patel, who led unfancied Gujarat to the Ranji Trophy title in January 2017 — will first have to ensure an equanimous relationship with the two captains and the head coach to ensure that the winds of uncertainty threatening to sweep through the cricketing landscape are calmed, if not quelled, post haste. Because the squads for the tour of New Zealand, beginning with the first of five T20Is in Christchurch on October 22, need to be picked; the team is expected to depart from Bengaluru on October 18, they must too,. Dravid’s tenure as head coach ended with India’s defeat to Australia, before he was persuaded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and, more decisively, by a phone call from Rohit, to stay on till the end of the T20 World Cup. That proved to be a masterstroke; Rohit and Dravid realised there was unfinished business to address, and while the T20 World Cup might not hold the same aura as its more established white-ball counterpart, it was immensely satisfying for the two driven men that, finally, they had worthwhile silverware to show for their hegemony, hard work and entertaining, aggressive brand of cricket. Should events unfold along expected lines, India will have a new chairman very soon. The T20Is will be followed by five ODIs, the first phase of the final leg of preparations for the World Cup, and two Tests.