Do you know that currently Mumbai, Saurashtra, Vidarbha and Gujarat do not have any representative in the National Selection Committee meeting? Whoever has performed brilliantly from these teams recently, there has been no selector to recommend their names for Team India for the last five months.
For this reason, in the home series against Sri Lanka and tour to Ireland and England, no selector from the West Zone was on the National Selection Committee. Even for ODI team against the West Indies, there would be no one from this region in the selection committee for the T20I series.
In fact, one of the rules of BCCI is that no official can stay in any committee for more than five years. The BCCI did not appoint anyone after West Zone selector Abey Kuruvilla’s tenure in the senior team’s committee ended in February this year. Kuruvilla has been on the junior selection committee for four the past years.
But now the BCCI has relented and will soon fill the void by appointing at least a representative of the West Zone.
This year the Mumbai cricket team reached the Ranji Trophy final and Sarfaraz Khan and Shams Mulani performed brilliantly in tournament. But there was no selector to push their case in the national team.
Presently, Chetan Sharma is the chairman of the National Selection Committee, who hails from North Zone, Sunil Joshi from South, Debashish Mohanty from East Zone and Harvinder Singh from Central Zone. Harvinder, Mohanty and Chetan Sharma were the fast bowlers on their playing days, while Sunil Joshi was the left arm spinner. Kuruvilla was also a fast bowler, who is now a position of General Manager (game development).
It is also worth mentioning here that the advisory committee of the board, which selects the selectors, has fallen short of members. Former fast bowler Madan Lal was member of this committee, but after crossing the age of 70 he is no longer a member of this committee.
The BCCI had taken a decision long back not to keep any member above 70 in any committee. Sulakshana Naik and RP Singh are in this committee.
Now, it remains to be seen if the BCCI first appoints a new member to the advisory committee or entrusts the responsibility of selecting the selector of West Zone to Naik and Singh.