Former Indian pacer Debashish Mohanty has been added into the five-member national junior selection panel. It has been conducted after Supreme Court has recently ordered to return the five-member selection committee and has ruled out Lodha Committee’s recommendation to decrease the number to three.
Mohanty has played two Tests and 45 ODIs for India from 1997 to 2001, including the 1999 Cricket World Cup. The SC appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief Vinod Rai has confirmed the news and also added that the right-arm medium pacer has passed the eligibility criteria for the selection committee member.
Rai told PTI, “We have appointed Debashish Mohanty as the fifth member of the junior selection panel. Since SC order states that it needs to be five-member panel, we had given the names to Cricket Advisory Committee.
“However Sachin (Tendulkar), Sourav (Ganguly) and VVS Laxman all declined as they had their own reasons. So among the list of names available we saw Debashish had the maximum international experience. So he has been appointed.”
While Tendulkar has declined due to his son Arjun Tendulkar’s recent debut for India U19 cricket team, Ganguly is the President of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and VVS Laxman is a mentor of IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Talking more about the national junior selection panel, Rai added, “Ashish Kapoor had comeback earlier. And Amit Sharma has also made a comeback to the panel. Since one vacancy was still left after Venkatesh Prasad’s resignation, we needed to fill it up at earliest.”
Gyanendra Pandey and Rakesh Parikh are the other members in this junior selection panel.
The newly formed committee will select the India U19 cricket team for the upcoming Quadrangular tournament (India U19, Afghanistan U19, Nepal U19 and NCA U19) in Kolkata, starting in September. Later, the committee will also select the India U19 cricket team for the 2018 U19 Asia Cup.
Rai added on this, “The ACC norms state that U19 Asia Cup squad has to be announced a month earlier. So we needed to get the panel ready.”
