Hardik Pandya was vice-captain to Rohit Sharma in India’s victorious campaign in the T20 World Cup and had a great tournament (144 runs at a strike-rate of 151.57 and 11 wickets at an average of 17.36).
It was expected that Pandya will be the natural successor to Rohit. On Monday, prior to the team’s departure to Sri Lanka from Mumbai, Agarkar revealed that Pandya’s battles with fitness was the prime reason why the selectors took that call. “The captain should be on the park more often than not,” was Agarkar’s blunt take on Pandya’s demotion.
“Why Surya as captain? Because he is one of the deserving candidates,” Agarkar stated.
Growing dressing room respect for the dashing Mumbai batter was also another reason revealed by Agarkar. “He’s been around the group over the last year, we get feedback from the dressing room a lot. He has a good cricket brain. One of the main issues we discussed was that you want a captain who is likely to play all the games. We think he is a deserving candidate,” Agarkar explained.
Agarkar though was also full of praise for Pandya’s skill set and said they do not want to burden him with more responsibility.
Why was Rahul overlooked?
KL Rahul, a player who has led India across formats, was another cricketer one felt, who could be entrusted with the responsibility of captaincy.
“We’ve got a chance to hit the reset button, and we have got a bit more time to plan. When Hardik got injured, captaincy became a challenge as Rohit wasn’t playing T20Is. Because he was still around, it made our life easier, and he could come and lead. We don’t want that situation going forward where suddenly we have to look around for a captain in case there are injuries or loss of form somewhere. Shubman has shown decent leadership qualities, and we want to try him to get experiences.”
Agarkar was asked if the calls to drop players like Sanju Samson (dropped for ODIs despite getting a hundred in his last outing vs SA in a series-decider), Abhishek Sharma (dropped from T20Is despite getting a hundred in Zimbabwe) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (dropped despite impressing in both ODIs and T20Is) were justified and whether the players would feel hard-done by?
“Every player who is left out feels hard-done by. Our challenge is to pick only 15. To try and get the best balance possible, someone is likely to miss out. You’ve got to see who is picked ahead of them (KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer). Are those guys not deserving of their place?” Agarkar asked.
Jadeja not dropped from ODIs
While there was significant angst at the ouster of Samson and Gaikwad from the ODI team, a constant name across formats was also absent. That of Ravindra Jadeja. “There’s a big Test season coming up, where he’s likely to feature in a lot of the Tests. I think we should have clarified after the selection that he’s not been dropped,” admitted Agarkar.
