National selection committee will have ‘six’, not five members

When the national selection committee meets here on September 23 to pick the Rest of India team for the Irani Trophy, there will be six — not five — selectors in the room. Krishnamachari Srikkanth & Co will have an ‘addition’ to their panel. Sanjay Jagdale is a former selector and, by virtue of being the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), he will be part of the committee.

He will be its convenor.

Jagdale was a national selector just about three years ago. He is considered one of the best selectors the BCCI has ever had. So, there is every chance that the new secretary will have quite a few things to say whenever the panel meets.

“Absolutely not,” Jagdale asserts. “My job will be to convene and conduct the meetings. I won’t interfere in selection issues at all,” the man from Indore reiterates. Jagdale is, perhaps, the first man in Indian cricket to have become convenor of a committee he was once a part of.

It, sure, is unprecedented in the annals of Indian cricket, but Jagdale is not the only one to have held both posts. Ghulam Ahmed occupied the positions in the late 1970s and early 1980s in reverse order. The Hyderabadi became a selector after holding the post of secretary. In fact, Ahmed is a former India skipper. He played 23 Tests and led the country in one of them. Jagdale, on the other hand, played 53 First Class matches for Madhya Pradesh.

Ahmed, who passed away in 1998, held the post of secretary between 1977 and 1980. He became a selector a year after he relinquished the office. In fact, he was one of the five men who picked the World Cup-winning team in 1983.

Interestingly enough, Ahmed and Jagdale are not the only ones to have held the posts of selector and office-bearer. Raj Singh Dungarpur is also a part of this elite group. He was a selector and went on to become BCCI president.

The former strongman of the Cricket Club of India had played for Rajasthan in the Ranji Trophy. He became board president in 1996, a position he held for three years. He was selector in 1987-88. He became chairman of the selection committee for the next two years during which he’d picked a certain Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.