The head of the Indian selection committee, MSK Prasad was left surprised after discarded veteran India opener Murali Vijay spoke about “lack of communication” from the national selection committee.

The three-member selection committee, led by Prasad, has been under the scanner after Karun Nair revealed that neither the team management nor the selectors communicated with him about being dropped after six straight Test matches. With veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh also criticizing the “parameters of selection”, the under-fire Prasad has been on a clarification spree of late.

Talking about the same, Prasad said, “All these are baseless reports. With regard to the non-communication with Murali Vijay after dropping him, I am equally surprised why he has said this while my colleague and selector on call Devang Gandhi had clearly informed him about the reasons why he was dropped.”

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In England, Vijay scored 20 and 6 in the opening Test in Birmingham, a pair of duck at the Lord’s as well. Clarifying his part, Prasad said, that Shikhar Dhawan was dropped as he failed to replicate his white ball form in the red ball format.

The chief selector explained, “Shikhar is a prolific run-getter in white ball cricket which unfortunately he couldn’t replicate in red ball cricket. We have given him considerable opportunities before taking the decision on him in the longer format and give the opportunity to the youngsters like Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal who were prolific run-getters in domestic cricket and India A.”

A senior BCCI official said that Vijay is probably not providing the cricket loving nation a clear picture of what has transpired.

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The BCCI official said, “It is very convenient that MSK has been made the whipping boy with some of these players not giving the correct picture. How did Vijay land a contract with Essex? Would he care to tell us? The arrangement was done by BCCI after speaking to national selectors. Within a week of getting dropped, he was playing County cricket for Essex. He, in fact, missed the early part of Vijay Hazare Trophy as he was playing county cricket. So didn’t Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) know that he was playing county cricket? Vijay would do well not to speak about communication.”