Borde, Sekhar join select band; Wadekar, Yadav excluded

The junior coach is Roger Binny and the selector from South Zone is the MRF Pace Academy coach TA Sekhar, the man who played two Tests for India.

Ajit Wadekar has been removed from the panel of selectors and his place will be taken by former middle-order batsman Chandu Borde. Borde will be the chairman of the selection panel as well. The rest of the three selectors — Ashok Malhotra, Madan Lal, Anil Deshpande — retain their places.

Outside the Rajputana Hall of the Rambagh Place, where the Board meeting was being held,scores of TV, and print media men rushed towards Lele, the moment he came out to brief the press. Lele, who has been drawing a lot of flak for issuing statements and then denying them and was also reprimanded in the meeting for having said that the media publishes `gossip’, answered all the questions with a straight face.

Why has the Board sacked Srikkanth? Have they not been happy with his work? “No, he has done a good job. The Board has appreciated the good work of Srikkanth and Anshuman Gaekwad.”

If that has been the case why remove them? “The board members felt so,” is Lele’s answer.

Has Wadekar services also been appreciated? “In the matter of selectors, the decision is totally that of the zones and the West decided to replace him.”

Even while the press conference was going on, there were rumours making the round that Manohar Joshi has resigned as board’s vice-president. Lele denied that and Bindra, though not attending the meeting, was around to neither confirm or deny the report. “We areformulating a strategy and whatever we will do will be in consultation with Mr Joshi,” Bindra said.

After all the confusion and conflicting signals emanating for the last two days, another annual jamboore of the board has come to an end. Unlike most of the previous ocassions, the meeting this time lasted for not one but two days. “We are going to discuss cricket this time,” was the refrain of most of the members. In the end all they discussed was who gets which post and how to juggle around names into various committees so that the votes of the ruling group remain intact.

What needs to be done to improve the standard of domestic cricket and such like issues were not even touched. The magic wand, the Board would like the world to believe is now in the hands of Kapil Dev. The rest is all irrelevent.

PTI ADDS: Borde’s replacement of Wadekar reflects the last minute manoeuvres after outgoing National coach and former India bat Anshuman Gaekwad was widely expected to be nominated.

Borde (65) wasearlier selector from 1982 to 1986 and chairman of the panel from 1984-86.

Borde was a solid middle-order batsman who played 55 Tests for India between 1958-1969 and was the vice-captain under Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi.

He notched up 3,061 runs in 97 innings with 177 not out against Pakistan at Chennai in 1960-61 as his best. He scored five hundreds and averaged 35.59 per innings.

Borde also took 52 wickets with his leg spin but had to give up his bowling after developing shoulder trouble.

Sekhar (TN) succeeds ex-Test off-spinner Shivlal Yadav (Hyderabad) as the selector from South Zone, edging out former Test wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani (Karnataka).

Binny was appointed India A coach to succeed Srikkanth, who had apparently declined to accept the selector’s post once Kapil pipped him to the senior coach’s job.

SELECTION COMMITTEES

Senior: Chandu Borde (West-chairman), Madan Lal (North), Ashok Malhotra (East), Anil Deshpande (Central) and TA Sekhar (South).

Junior: Rajinder Goel(chairman, North), Ashish Sinha (East), Mahendra Raj Dev (West), Subhash Kangralkar (South) and Sashikant Khandekar (Central)