Agarkar’s roller-coaster ride

From all indications, BCCI senior chief selector Ajit Agarkar has chaired his last selection committee meeting. A little over a week back, the Agarkar-led panel picked the national squads to do duty against West Indies in three One-Day Internationals and five Twenty20 Internationals, apart from naming the Rest of India side to take on Ranji Trophy champions Jammu & Kashmir in the Irani Cup.Among those named in the ODI squad was Rohit Sharma, the former captain whose future has been needlessly put under the microscope over the last 12 months. It is widely perceived that Rohit has inadvertently become the primary reason for Agarkar choosing, as is being touted, not to seek an extension to his term as chairman of selectors when his tenure ends early next week.Good rapportWhen Agarkar was named the chairman in July 2023, there was a sense of great optimism and feel-good. He had played alongside Rohit, by then firmly entrenched as the all-format skipper, as well as head coach Rahul Dravid. He shared a good rapport with the two men that formed the core leadership group, and it was widely anticipated that this troika would work in tandem to push Indian cricket further ahead on the path to dominance.The honeymoon period lasted for a fair while, it can’t be disputed. Under Rohit, India charged through to the final of the home 50-over World Cup in 2023 before coming a cropper in the title round against Australia, then mounted a flawless, unbeaten campaign in the Americas as they won a second T20 World Cup crown in Bridgetown in June 2024. In some ways, that victory was to prove a decisive moment in Indian cricket, and not necessarily for the reasons one might consider organic or positive.Dravid’s tenure as head coach ended with India’s defeat to Australia, before he was persuaded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and, more decisively, by a phone call from Rohit, to stay on till the end of the T20 World Cup. That proved to be a masterstroke; Rohit and Dravid realised there was unfinished business to address, and while the T20 World Cup might not hold the same aura as its more established white-ball counterpart, it was immensely satisfying for the two driven men that, finally, they had worthwhile silverware to show for their hegemony, hard work and entertaining, aggressive brand of cricket.As Dravid walked away into the sunset and V.V.S. Laxman expressed his inability to take over as head coach, the BCCI’s hunt for a successor to the Bengalurean ended with Gautam Gambhir, the pugnacious former opener with a feisty, confrontational streak. Gambhir came with his own set of ideas. Unstated but perhaps somewhere near the top of that list was a desire to put together a new, young Test team that didn’t have a place at some stage in the not-too-distant future for Rohit, his predecessor Virat Kohli and off-spinning giant R. Ashwin.The first seeds of discontent were sowed in Gambhir’s second series in charge, at home against New Zealand in October-November 2024. India were crushed 0-3, their first home series loss in more than a decade, and the finger-pointing began almost immediately.Within months of that debacle, the celebrated trio had played its last Tests at different times on the subsequent tour of Australia, which India lost 1-3. Rohit missed the first game, victory in Perth, as he was away on paternity leave, and when he rejoined the team, his form deserted him summarily. Ashwin retired midway through the series, Rohit dropped himself for the final game in Sydney owing to poor form and Kohli’s tour unravelled dramatically after an unbeaten second-innings hundred in Perth as he unerringly found the slip cordon time after time.Tricky path to transitionRohit and Kohli announced their retirement from Test cricket within a week of each other in May 2025. By this time, Gambhir and Agarkar had already embarked on the tricky path to transition. To lose three giants in one fell swoop isn’t easy to recover from. Agarkar’s panel had its work cut out but it showed gumption and a propensity to go with its gut by naming Shubman Gill as the Test captain.Gill’s first assignment was an away tour of England, where he showed sensational form and reasonably promising tactical awareness in securing a fabulous 2-2 stalemate. The captain led from the front with four hundreds, including a monumental 269 in Birmingham, on his way to 754 dazzling runs and eked out fantastic returns from Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna as both of India’s victories came when Jasprit Bumrah was rested to manage his workload. Agarkar and Laxman... communication lines blurred? | Photo Credit: File photo: N. SRIDHARAN Agarkar’s panel bared its intentions when it brought Gill back into the T20I setup —– as the vice-captain to Suryakumar Yadav, no less — and thrust him into the hot-seat in the ODI format too last October. Between the Australia Test series and IPL 2025, during the course of which Rohit and Kohli announced their Test retirements, India had won five matches on the trot to storm to the Champions Trophy title in the desert sands of Dubai in March.Rohit had masterminded that charge with aplomb, using his bat as a scything weapon and leading with characteristic nous and acumen, but in a clear indication that he was on borrowed time, Agarkar and his men believed a change in leadership was imperative with the next 50-over World Cup two years away.Steadfast, dignified silenceFrom that point, Rohit has been a marked man, his every move dissected, his every ODI series touted as his international swansong. All of a sudden, from being the most important man in Indian cricket, he was put in a difficult place, almost having to ‘prove’ himself time after time. To his credit, the Mumbaikar has maintained a steadfast, dignified silence — much like he did when he was summarily divested of the Mumbai Indians captaincy a couple of years back even though he had led the franchise to five titles — and allowed his bat to do the talking.The last straw, the consensus is, in the Agarkar vs. Rohit saga — a saga unfolding in social media and on the internet and in reams of newsprint — came in England in July. Ostensibly, Rohit had been asked to announce his retirement at the end of the three-match series, after the final game at Lord’s. In the lead-up to the last ODI, epitaphs were being written, cryptic posts appeared on social media platforms and it was more or less accepted that Rohit wouldn’t play for the country again, until, in an unprecedented move, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia voluntarily declared that Lord’s would not be Rohit’s swansong.Clearly, that hasn’t gone down well with Agarkar, and understandably so. Selection matters are the prerogative of the selectors, specifically appointed for that sole purpose. If the BCCI wanted Rohit to continue, the secretary or the office-bearers could have had a word in private with Agarkar to express their stance. The public declaration, without provocation, raised Agarkar’s hackles and his relationship with the BCCI, it is presumed, soured from that point in mid-July onwards.Notwithstanding the unseemly haste in trying to get rid of one of the greatest white-ball practitioners of all time, Agarkar had reason to feel miffed, if not downright insulted. But he didn’t cover himself in glory by not attending the review meeting called by the BCCI in Mumbai at the beginning of this month. By now, it was evident that things had reached a point of no-return, and even though Saikia made a spirited defence of the Agarkar no-show by citing personal reasons, no one had any doubts that the die had been cast.If Agarkar does bow out, his report card will be a mixed bag. During his 38-month tenure, India won two T20 World Cups, two Asia Cups (one each in the 50- and the 20-over formats) and made it to the final of the 50-over World Cup at home. But their Test record has been abysmal – home series routs by New Zealand and South Africa (2-0 last November), and an away series loss to Australia in 2024-25 (1-3) completely cancel out all else, including a 1-0 victory in Sri Lanka last month.Left-field decisionIndia have stuttered and stumbled in the transition phase, especially when it comes to bowling, and there has been a certain ambivalence in white-ball selection. The return of Shreyas Iyer to the T20I ecosystem after three years, in the role of captain, is as much of a left-field decision as the hasty call-up and dumping of Gill from the same version last year. From the days when Indian squads looked settled and were fuelled by consistency in selection, there is a sense of insecurity and of nervously looking over one’s shoulder, which is fair from the ideal scenario in which anyone can give off their best.There have been reports of a breakdown in communication between Agarkar and Laxman, the head of the Centre of Excellence, especially when it comes to picking India ‘A’ squads. The CoE has chalked out long-standing pathways to prepare the next set of emerging talent for international cricket, but the selection panel has often chosen to override that pathway and thrust established Indian Test players into the mix, ostensibly for match practice, even in familiar home conditions. It is reliably learnt that Laxman wasn’t even consulted when the selectors picked the squad for the Asian Games though it was clear many months back that he would be the coach in Aichi-Nagoya. So much for transparency and openness isn’t a quip without substance.Should events unfold along expected lines, India will have a new chairman very soon. They must too, because the squads for the tour of New Zealand, beginning with the first of five T20Is in Christchurch on October 22, need to be picked; the team is expected to depart from Bengaluru on October 18. The T20Is will be followed by five ODIs, the first phase of the final leg of preparations for the World Cup, and two Tests. Whoever the new chairman is — for now, the needle points in the direction of former India stumper Parthiv Patel, who led unfancied Gujarat to the Ranji Trophy title in January 2017 — will first have to ensure an equanimous relationship with the two captains and the head coach to ensure that the winds of uncertainty threatening to sweep through the cricketing landscape are calmed, if not quelled, post haste.