Cricket

Selectors to get paid Rs.25 lakh: BCCI

In a move towards professionalism, the selection committee in Indian cricket will undergo several changes.

The most important step will be to scrap the existing honorary set-up, and pay each selector Rs 25 lakh per annum. The working committee also proposed that a former player should have retired from international cricket at least ten years ago to qualify for the selector’s job, and that he should not be an office-bearer of the BCCI or any of its affiliated units.

All proposals, though, are subject to ratification at the board’s annual general meeting (AGM) on September 27 and 28 in Mumbai.

Applying these criteria to the present batch of selectors only one member, Bhupinder Singh, qualifies for the new panel. Dilip Vengsarkar, the present chairman of selectors, is the vice-president of the Mumbai Cricket Association; Ranjib Biswal, the East Zone selector, is president of the Orissa Cricket Association; Venkatapathy Raju, the South Zone member on the panel, played his final international game in India’s historic triumph against Australia in 2001 at the Eden Gardens; and Sanjay Jagdale holds the secretary’s post at the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association. He has also served for seven years on the national selection panel and can’t be nominated once again as a representative from the Central Zone.

Only Bhupinder, who played three one-dayers in the 1990s, is eligible to serve another term on the national panel but that will happen if his zonal committee, North, nominates him as the representative for another term.

If the new norms do get ratified next month, an almost new-look selection panel will pick the squad for the Test series against Australia, which starts in October.

Tags: bcci, bhupinder singh, Dilip Vengsarkar, ranjib biswal, sanjay jagdale, selectors, venkatapathy raju