Revealed: Why Chetan Sharma-led Selection Committee Was Sacked By BCCI

The BCCI fired the whole four-member senior national selection committee led by Chetan Sharma on Friday, after India’s failure to reach the final of the T20 World Cup in Australia.

The BCCI requested applications for national selectors on Friday (Senior Men). The deadline for applications is November 28.

It was first reported by PTI on October 18 following the BCCI AGM that Chetan would be fired, however, it is now known that his committee has not even been informed of the dismissal.

An intriguing part of the new chairman’s job description is “selecting a captain in each format,” which raises the possibility that BCCI will transition to split captaincy soon.

Chetan (North Zone), Harvinder Singh (Central Zone), Sunil Joshi (South Zone), and Debasish Mohanty (East Zone) have served as senior national selectors for the shortest periods of time recently.

National selectors Joshi and Harvinder were appointed in February 2020. Following the AGM in January 2021, Chetan assumed control of the position of chairman of selectors, and Mohanty and Kuruvilla joined him.

Normally, top national selectors serve four-year terms that can be extended. After Abbey Kuruvilla’s term was over, there was no longer a West Zone selector.

BCCI officials were dissatisfied with Chetan Sharma and his committee’s work:

India also lost the World Test Championships final and failed to go past the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup while Chetan’s leadership.

“For Chetan to save his job, India needed to win the T20 World Cup. Nothing less could have saved him. But once, he was asked to select four squads at one go (New Zealand and Bangladesh away series) which was unprecedented, one could read between the lines,” a BCCI insider, who has been tracking the developments, told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

The BCCI hierarchy was dissatisfied with Chetan and his committee’s poor performance for a variety of reasons. Chetan is said to have never been forceful when making decisions.

Some of the reasons for his dismissal are: not having a settled squad, allowing eight international skippers in one year with some select seniors turning workload management into a joke, picking KL Rahul after an eight-month hiatus from T20 cricket, going on almost every India tour but not being able to create a decisive set of players in collaboration with team management.

Reasons for Chetan Sharma's sacking (Reported by PTI):

– Not being able to make a settled squad with 8 captains in 1 just a year.
– Loss in Asia Cup and T20 World Cup.
– Picking KL Rahul after 8 months gap.
– Not picking domestic and IPL performers.
– Workload management.

— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) November 18, 2022

Chetan and his team could never reward domestic or IPL performers while also selecting experts for two T20 World Cups. Theirs is a committee that has seen India lose two T20 World Cup games by ten wickets, something that has never happened before.

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