Former India cricketer S Badrinath shared his rant about the criteria of selection within the Indian cricket team. His expression of disappointment came after the BCCI announced India’s ODI and T20I squads for the upcoming Sri Lanka tour. Badrinath criticised the omission of Ruturaj Gaikwad from the T20I side and Rinku Singh from the ODI squad. He voiced his frustration and said that players need a ‘bad boy image’ and tattoos on their bodies to make it to the Indian team. He suggested that the selection process has been unfair as it looks at a certain image over the merits of a player.
“Sometimes it seems like you need a bad guy image when the likes of Rinku Singh, Ruturaj Gaikwad and others are not selected for the Indian team. It seems that you need to be in a relationship with some Bollywood actresses, have a good media manager, and have body tattoos,” Badrinath said on his YouTube channel, Cric Debate with Badri.
The Indian team will be travelling to Sri Lanka under the new head coach Gautam Gambhir for the ODI and T20I series. The BCCI had announced the squad for both the formats and had some notable exclusions. The ODI squad saw the return of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma with Shubman Gill being named as the vice-captain for both formats.
The T20I format saw Suryakumar Yadav being named as the captain over Hardik Pandya. A certain section of fans were upset about the exclusion of Ruturaj Gaikwad who had an impressive run with the bat in the recently concluded 5-match T20I series against Zimbabwe. He had registered scores of 7, 77 and 49 in the 3 matches he had got to play. Abhishek Sharma, who scored a blazing century in his second international match, showcasing immense talent, was another notable miss.
