No New Selection Panel, MSK Prasad's Panel To Pick India Squad For South Africa Series

It has been over a month since BCCI president Sourav Ganguly had declared that a new selection committee will pick the squad for the three ODIs against South Africa. After the end of the ongoing tour of New Zealand, India will host the Proteas for the short series from March 12.

However, the new selectors have not been named yet. Towards the end of the last month, the new Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) was named. The panel has been given the responsibility to pick the new selectors to replace MSK Prasad and Gagan Khoda.

With still no clarity over the appointment of the new selectors, Bangalore Mirror has reported that MSK Prasad’s panel will be asked to select the squad for the South Africa series. The report further stated that the CAC members are yet to be briefed about how to go about their job.

According to reports, the new selection panel will be in place in the first week of March but the panel is unlikely to select the squad for the upcoming series. With the first of the three ODIs against South Africa slated for March 12, the squad should ideally be picked at least one week in advance, by March 5 that is.

But with nothing happening on the ground, there is no guarantee whether the new panel will be functioning by then, leave alone the new chairman having time to watch games before picking the squad for such an important series.

The news outlet also stated that the old panel is getting active. One of the five members (Jatin Paranjpe) is in New Zealand and two others will be watching the Ranji Trophy semi-finals in Rajkot and Kolkata. Not only that, one of the selectors will also watch the matches of the DY Patil T20 tournament where the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Hardik Pandya will be in action.

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