No player Tamil Nadu in Duleep Trophy squads

CHENNAI: As the selection committee announced the Duleep Trophy squads on Tuesday, it told a story or two about Tamil Nadu. For the first time in the recent past, the state doesn’t have any player in the three squads. This means there is not a soul from Tamil Nadu in India’s fringe system, which includes a pool of 44 players.

The squads are picked on performance in the previous season and considering that Tamil Nadu didn’t make it past the group stages in Ranji Trophy, Vijay Hazare and Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s, it is not surprising that none of them found a place. Vijay Shankar, recovering from injury, was not considered. Washington Sundar, currently in the Caribbean with the national T20 squad, hasn’t found a place either.

Apart from Baba Indrajith, there was hardly any standout performer last season. The other regular in recent times was Abhinav Mukund. The left-hander has also been ignored. He did tally 622 runs in Ranji with three tons, but the selectors seem to have reckoned that none of those came when it mattered. Priyank Panchal of Gujarat and Bengal’s Abhimanyu Easwaran have overtaken him by scoring heavily.

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Tamil Nadu players are well looked after by the association as well as corporate houses. Last season’s performance came as a shock for the association, which is disturbed by the attitude of a few players, especially seniors.

For years, the players had a say in deciding the coach and in some cases captains have backed players despite not enough returns. But in terms of performance, they haven’t backed it on the field, which has now led to the TNCA looking at a hard task-master as a coach for next season. Hrishikesh Kanitkar is on the way out.

Former captain S Sharath, who was the state selection panel head last season as well as a part of Duleep squads in the 90s, said he was sad that no one made it.

“It’s disappointing. There’s not a single player good enough to be considered among the 45. It’s similar in the U19 level too. It’s wake-up call. For years, we have passed the buck to the association, selectors, coaches, but it has to stop. Ultimately, the players have to perform. Sadly, there was nobody who could attract the eyeballs,” he lamented.

Back to red ball

The Duleep Trophy, which has been India’s only day-night first-class tournament for the last three seasons, is set to go back to the day format with red ball due to lack of TV coverage.

Squads

India Blue 

Shubman Gill (C), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Rajat Patidar, Anmolpreet Singh, Ricky Bhui, Ankit Bawne, Snell Patel (wk), Shreyas Gopal, Saurabh Kumar, Jalaj Saxena, Tushar Deshpande, Basil Thampi, Diwesh Pathania, Aniket Choudhary, Ashutosh Aman.

India Green 

Faiz Fazal (C), Akshath Reddy, Dhruv Shorey, Priyam Garg, Siddesh Lad, Akshdeep Nath, Rahul Chahar, Dharmendra Jadeja, Jayant Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Ishan Porel, Tanveer ul Haq, Akshay Wadkar (wk), Rajesh Mohanty, Milind Kumar.

India Red

Priyank Panchal (C), Abhimanyu Easwaran, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Ishan Kishan (wk), Harpreet Bhatia, Aditya Sarwate, Mahipal Lomror, Akshay Wakhare, Varun Aaron, Ronit More, Jaydev Unadkat, Sandeep Warrier, Ankit Kalsi.

Date: August 17-September 8 | Venue: Bengaluru