Former Indian allrounder and 1983 World Cup winning skipper Kapil Dev was sacked as captain after the loss to England in the 1987 World Cup semis at the Wankhede. Generally, in India, World Cups and series against Pakistan are too important and anything less than the trophy or a series win is considered as failure.
India’s loss to New Zealand in the last four clash at Manchester has been called a massive failure by fans and ex-cricketers. Legendary Indian opener and former captain Sunil Gavaskar – who was sacked after losing the 1982-83 series to Pakistan 0-3 – also feels Kohli should have at least been questioned or his captaincy should have at least been reviewed.
Raising the Kohli question, Gavaskar, writing in his column for Mid-Day, expressed surprise why the 30-year old ace batsman was automatically allowed to continue and called the selectors “lame ducks”.
“That they selected the team for West Indies without first having a meeting to select the captain brings up the question of whether Virat Kohli is the captain of the team at his or the selection committee’s pleasure,” Gavaskar wrote.
“To the best of our knowledge his (Kohli’s) appointment was till the World Cup. After that, it was incumbent on the selectors to meet even if it was for five minutes for his reappointment.
“Speaking of lame ducks, the Indian selection committee appears to be one. After the reappointment, he (captain) gets invited to the meeting for his views on the selecting the players for the team. By bypassing the procedure, the message that goes out is that while the players like Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik get dropped after below expectations performance, the captain continues despite much below par expectations where the team did not even reach the finals.”
Continuing his attack against the selection committee which consists of former players Sarandeep Singh, Devang Gandhi, Jatin Paranjape and Gagan Khoda besides Prasad, Gavaskar said that the lack of “stature” in the group was an impediment in their smooth functioning. None of the current selectors had long careers in India colours and in fact two – Paranjape and Khoda – didn’t play a single Test, featuring only in a few ODIs. Gavaskar, one of the greats of Indian cricket himself, believes players of stature will be able to avoid getting “bullied” by the team management into making decisions.
“This is probably one of the last selections for this committee as a new one will get appointed soon,” he wrote. “Hopefully that will have players of stature who will not get bullied and be able to tell the team management that their job is to play with the team chosen by the selectors.”
