Former Indian cricketer Aashish Kapoor has replaced Venkatesh Prasad in the All-India Junior Selection Committee. In the earlier last month, Venkatesh Prasad resigned from his role to make a comeback as bowling coach.
Aashish Kapoor has been selected in place of Venkatesh Prasad in the three-member All-India Junior Selection Committee. The other two members are Gyanendra Pandey and Rakesh Parikh.
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Aashish had played 4 Tests and 17 ODIs for India from 1994 to 2000. He was one of the members in 1996 ICC Cricket World Cup.
Before the implementation of Lodha reforms, Aashish was a member along with former Punjab batsman Amit Sharma in the five-member junior selection committee. But now it reduced to three-member.
Earlier, after Venkatesh Prasad’s resignation, a senior BCCI official told PTI about the selection criteria, “In all likelihood, Ashish will make a comeback into the junior selection panel now that Venky has resigned. In case of Jatin Paranjpe and Gagan Khoda, they can’t be senior national selectors again as they are not Test players. But in case of Ashish and Amit, there was no problem with eligibility criteria.
“They had to make way because the other three (Prasad, Pandey and Parikh) were appointed in September 2015 and these two (Kapoor and Sharma) in 2016. Now with Venky gone, it’s only fair that Ashish makes a comeback as he has better credentials than Amit. He will in any case be the only Test cricketer in junior panel. Unless Committee Of Administrators (COA) has something completely different on their mind, it’s going to be Ashish.”
After BCCI appointed Aashish Kumar as the new junior selector, interim president CK Khanna congratulated him by quoting, “I wish him all the very best for this endeavour. I am sure he has a lot to offer when it comes to being a part of the junior selection committee with his varied expertise and experience in the game. India have a rich talent pool and it is important to identify the talent at a young age and nurture them.”
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On the other hand, former Indian pacer Venkatesh Prasad had said that he wanted to return to the coaching and that’s why he resigned from that role.
In few days after that resignation, Prasad joined with IPL team Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) as bowling coach. After joining with the team, Prasad had told The Indian Express, “It was happening and to avoid the conflict of interest, I quit my job as the chairman of the (junior) selection committee. This is a great opportunity and honestly I would like to thank Virender Sehwag (Kings XI mentor and team director), who proposed my name to the franchise. I also share a very good relationship with R Ashwin (captain) since my CSK days.”
