Raj Singh Dungarpur, former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, has said that the current BCCI president Sharad Pawar would set up a 'bad precedent' if he asks the selection committee to review its decision on dropping Sourav Ganguly from the third Test against Sri Lanka to be played at Ahmedabad.
Pawar had told journalists on Thursday night in New Delhi that he was shocked to learn that Ganguly had been dropped from the Indian team and he would talk to the chairman of the selection committee Kiran More about it.
"If Pawar does what has been reported, then he would be setting up a very bad precedent because the names of the selected players are released to the media only after the board secretary gets approval from the president," Dungarpur told rediff.com on phone from his residence in Mumbai on Friday morning.
He said that since the selection committee has been given the job of selecting the team, it should be left to them. "There is no room for interference," he said.
Dungarpur recalled when he was chairman of the selection committee, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, who was then the captain of the Indian cricket team, had injured his finger while fielding and had left the ground without instructing anyone to carry on his job.
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"This happened in one of the Test matches against the West Indies in 1975. Clive Lloyd was leading the Caribbean team. In this situation, R Venkataraghavan took charge."
"But when the matter was brought to our notice, we immediately sent in the word that Sunil Gavaskar would deputise in place of Pataudi. A senior member of the board said that since Venkataraghavan was a senior player he should have been allowed to captain the side. But we did not agree with it," he explained.
What would you do if you were asked to explain your actions as a selector? "I would resign, and then explain," he said. However, given the shortage of time for the start of the third and final Test, he does not think that Ganguly has even an iota of a chance of getting into the team.
But Ranbir Singh Mahendra, who lost to Pawar in the BCCI elections in Kolkata last month, said that the selection committee has done injustice to Ganguly.
"I personally feel that a gross injustice has been done to the former Indian captain because he was dropped after a good performance in the Delhi Test."
"He scored 40 and 39 runs in the two innings and was involved in good partnerships in both the innings. I think the time has come when the selection committee would have to be more transparent and would have to give reasons why a particular player has been omitted," Mahendra said on phone from Chandigarh.