A late night assurance from Pawar that all issues would be addressed on Dec 7 or 8 will see Vengsarkar chair today’s meeting in Bangalore.
A late night assurance from Pawar that all issues would be addressed on Dec 7 or 8 will see Vengsarkar chair today’s meeting in Bangalore
MUMBAI: It took a late evening assurance, from none other than BCCI president Sharad Pawar, that all issues Dilip Vengsarkar is peeved with, including the ad-hoc imposition of guidelines on selectors, will be addressed on either Thursday or Friday for the chief selector to agree to fly to Bangalore.
Vengsarkar will now chair the National Selection Committee meeting that will pick the Test team for the tough tour of Australia and third Test at Bangalore.
“I have just spoken to BCCI president Sharad Pawar and he has assured me that all issues that I have raised will be addressed by him on December 6 or 7,” Vengsarkar said late on Tuesday.
Vengsarkar in his e-mail letter to Sharad Pawar had said that wanted to continue as chairman only if the ‘restrictions imposed on him are removed’.
Earlier in the day, Pawar said that the BCCI was ready to consider compensating chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar for the financial loss he would incur as he has stopped writing columns and termed the former Indian skipper’s specific demand as ‘legitimate’.
However, Vengsarkar wasn’t ready to leave his fate in the hands of the BCCI working committee that Pawar said would meet on December 16 to discuss the issue of compensation and considering making the guidelines ‘selector friendly’.
Even as Pawar was addressing a press conference in Delhi, Vengsarkar who watched the last session of the Mumbai versus Maharastra Ranji Trophy game, was closeted in the Mumbai dressing room picking the state team that would play the next two games.
After emerging from the Mumbai dressing room, Vengsarkar said that he would speak to senior BCCI officials and take a call late on Tuesday evening as to whether or not he would make the trip to Bangalore.
He then went to his vice-president’s cabin in the Mumbai Cricket Association office and emerged after an hour only to state that he would take a decision only after speaking to Pawar.
In spite of a seemingly softening of the stand of the BCCI, courtesy Pawar’s talk, Vengsarkar continued to be upset by the high-handedness of certain officials in the BCCI, who were at the forefront of formulating these guidelines in November aimed at belittling the selectors.
After playing 116 Tests for India and leading the country, Vengsarkar is not ready to be pushed around according to the whims and fancies of administrators, who think they have a greater say than him in team selection related-issued.
Sources close to the chief selector said that Vengsarkar was ready only for a ‘give and take’ compromise, that too in the larger interest of cricket.
However, at no cost was he ready to be seen as bowing down to the fiat of all-powerful administrators, who have formulated guidelines aimed at humiliating him.
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