Ajit Agarkar Among Favourites To Land Selector's Role, Likely To Be Made Chairman of Selection Committee: Report

Former India fast-bowler Ajit Agarkar is among the candidates who are favourites to be Team India’s new selectors. Earlier this week, the BCCI had invited applications for the the 3 national selectors positions in the senior men’s committee led by Sunil Joshi.

The shortlisted applicants will be replacing three outgoing selectors, Devang Gandhi (East Zone), Sarandeep Singh (North Zone) and Jatin Paranjape (West Zone), in the national selection panel.

The board had set a deadline of Sunday, November 15, for sending applications. There was also eligibility criteria for the applicants. The basic requirement for the applicants is a minimum eligibility criterion of 30 first-class appearances.

An age-cap of 60 years is also an eligibility. The board also made it clear that applicants with international experience (7 Tests or a combination of 10 ODIs and 20 first-class matches) will be given preference over the basic criterion of 30 first-class matches.

Strong pool of candidates:

According to The Times of India, the BCCI will have a strong pool of candidates to choose the new selectors for the national panel. The report stated that Ajit Agarkar as well as former pacer Chetan Sharma have applied for the job along with former India left-arm spinner Maninder Singh and opener Shiv Sunder Das.

With four hours to go for the deadline for applications on Sunday, these four names emerged as the strongest candidates. It will be interesting to see whether the BCCI maintains its traditional zonal policy or not. Earlier this year, it maintained the policy while roping in Sunil Joshi and Harvinder Singh.

However, the renewed BCCI constitution doesn’t specify the policy and states that the best five candidates should be appointed. The board, on its part, has maintained it’s not following a zonal policy which is why they didn’t mention it in the job requirements.

The report also stated that Ajit Agarkar is a strong favourite to become the chairman of the selection committee going by international experience. Agarkar played 191 ODIs, 26 Tests and 4 T20Is.

There are also speculations that the BCCI could elevate former India pacer Debasis Mohanty from being the chairman of junior selection committee to the senior senior panel.

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