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Should BCCI revoke the zonal selection process in the Duleep Trophy and hand the responsibility to the in-house selectors? The question was raised as soon as North Zone announced their line-up against West Zone with Yash Dhull as their opener, replacing the third-highest run scorer in the previous Ranji Trophy campaign, Sanat Sangwan.
Sangwan is supposed to be the automatic choice in the starting eleven for the quarter-finals of the Duleep Trophy. But for some reason, the team management of West Zone dropped Sanat Sangwan to play former India U-19 skipper Yash Dhull, who is not a specialist opener. In fact, Dhull's stats in longer formats are not so impressive.
The selection of Yash Dhull in the North Zone playing XI in a Duleep Trophy match has created controversy
Sanat Sangwan concluded his previous Ranji Trophy season with 828 runs, only after two other batters, Ravichandran Smaran (950 runs) and Ayush Doseja (949), while Yash Dhull scored 381 runs in the 2025-26 Ranji season. Stats clearly supported Sangwan's selection for the Duleep Trophy match against West Zone, but the reality turned out differently.
If Dhull could score a significant amount of runs, then nobody would have questioned the selection. As Dhull departed only after scoring 9 runs from 26 balls. From the beginning of the first innings, he looked uncomfortable against the West Zone pacers Tushar Deshpande and Shardul Thakur. Thakur clinched Yash Dhull, caught by Prithvi Shaw.
A top Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) official raised questions on the team selection process
According to a PTI report, Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) president Rohan Jaitley didn't respond on the playing eleven selection. But secretary Ashok Sharma said to the news agency PTI that in zonal matches, coaches decide whom to play and whom to drop. Ajay Sharma and Sarandeep Singh, the North Zone coaches for the ongoing Duleep Trophy tournament, are under the scanner right now for putting Yash Dhull ahead of Sanat Sangwan.
"In zonal matches, it is the coaches who decide the playing eleven. Ajay (head coach) and Sarandeep (assistant coach) are the two coaches. I can't sit here and say why they didn't pick Sanat and played Yash," Sharma said.
In another explanation, one DDCA official told the media that the middle-order of the playing combination is well-composed with players like Ayush Doseja, Ayush Badoni, Abdul Samad, and Nishant Sindhu.
Sanat Sangwan becomes the scapegoat in the Duleep Trophy?
If the coach somehow wants to fit Yash Dhull, who is also another middle-order batter, in the playing eleven, then he needs to drop someone from the team. In that case, the coaches chose to bench Sanat Sangwan, who is not among those cricketers who have a lot of backing in the Cricket Association.
"Since it was difficult to fit in Dhull in the middle-order where Doseja, Badoni, Samad and Sindhu are performers, the only person who could have been made the scapegoat was Sanat Sangwan, who doesn't have a lot of backing in DDCA," the official raised his doubts over the team selection.
The playing eleven of North Zone features five Jammu and Kashmir players, including captain Kanhaiya Wadhawan, Qamran, Abdul Samad, Abid Mushtaq and Sunil Kumar;r, three players from Delhi, including Dhull, who is the vice-captain of the team, Ayush Badoni and Ayush Doseja; Ishant Sindhu and Anshul Kamboj from Haryana; and Arshdeep Singh joins the team from Punjab.
