Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar has slammed the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) senior national men’s selection committee for their tendency to pick players for one format based on performances in another version, declaring India’s Asia Cup T20I team defies cricketing logic.
Though he did not specify names, Manjrekar picked up on the evolving tendency of selectors’ ‘format-mixing’ choices. Since the Asia Cup squad was unveiled by chief national selector Ajit Agarkar last week in Mumbai, experts and fans on social media have been divided over multiple choices in the team. While a group picked up on Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer’s snub, certain sections criticised the move to bring Test skipper Shubman Gill back into the T20I fold as vice-captain of the side.
The ‘Format mixing’ trend
“It’s something I’ve seen over the years, not recently: this tendency of selectors to pick a player based on performances in one format, where that person excelled, and then picking him for another format. When I see a player getting rewarded for his Test match performances by being placed in the T20 side, I just find that devoid of cricketing logic. It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Manjrekar on Instagram.
Manjrekar labelled Mumbai star Iyer’s snub as shocking after the Punjab Kings captain had a blockbuster IPL season after shining in India’s ODI Champions Trophy win in early March.
“Shreyas Iyer not making this T20 squad of India for the Asia Cup is just shocking. This is a guy who was left out of the Indian team for the right reason because they felt he wasn’t committing himself as much to domestic cricket. But it had the desired effect on Shreyas Iyer: when he came back again in the England at-home ODI series, the way he batted, you could see that he was just batting like he had never batted before,” remarked Manjrekar.
Iyer recorded his best-ever IPL season, racking up over 600 runs while leading Punjab to their first final in 11 years. His jaw-dropping 175-plus strike rate also ranked the best among all players who had aggregated as many runs as him in the season.
Why Iyer’s snub is shocking
“He didn’t put a foot wrong in that comeback series and then carried that form into IPL cricket. I don’t think any batter has had that kind of form throughout the IPL season, with the average over 50, strike rate over 170, and being the game-changer in the side with the bat. And he gets rewarded with non-selection,” Manjrekar added.
Manjrekar further highlighted that Iyer’s snub should have only come at the expense of someone who had performed better in T20 cricket and not the Test format, a possible dig at Gill’s return to the squad.
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“So, when you do that to a player who has put in one of the best performances ever in the last few months in a format for which the Indian team is being selected, and you leave him out of that format, that’s for a guy who has excelled in a completely different format: Test cricket. Pick a guy who’s done well in T20 cricket, and not just because somebody has done so well in Test cricket gets rewarded with a T20 place, especially at the cost of somebody like Shreyas Iyer.”
Despite his rampaging IPL season, Iyer could not even find himself in the extended 20-member pool of the T20I side, also missing the cut among the five standbys named for the tournament.
