In recent years, some of the selection decisions made by the Indian cricket board have been quite controversial.
The selection issue was brought into the fore-front during the 2019 World Cup when Ambati Rayudu was dropped to accommodate Vijay Shankar and KL Rahul.
Rayudu was backed for the controversial number four slot in the one-year run-up into the multilateral event.
Now, out of favour India international Manoj Tiwary has demanded for team selections to be televised on air.
“Team selections should be aired live, so that everyone can see which selector is taking which player’s name on which grounds. It will help us assess if the selection is fair or not. Normally, what happens is that when we players ask the selectors about why we were ignored, they tend to blame each other for it. So, to make things clear, it’s necessary that the selection meeting is telecast live,” Tiwary told ABP news.
After dropping Rayudu, former Chairman of Selectors MSK Prasad included Rayudu in the list of reserves.
During the tournament, even after injuries to Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay Shankar, Rishabh Pant and Mayank Agarwal were called in, ahead of Rayudu.
As a result, the Hyderabad batsman announced his international retirement. However, he took a U-turn and made his comeback to cricket after a few weeks
“They had four years to find a good No 4, still they couldn’t. Somewhere, we suffered due to this blunder in the World Cup semis. When they had so much time to finalize a man for the slot, this confusion shouldn’t have happened. It shows that the selection lacked consistency,” Tiwary added.
After the 2015 World Cup, the Indian team management has often been blamed for not backing batsmen for a longer period of time.
Before Rayudu, the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, MS Dhoni, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, Manish Pandey, Yuvraj Singh and Kedar Jadhav were also utilized for the number four slot.
