Former India wicket-keeper Ajay Ratra has been included in the national men’s selection committee.
The Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) of the BCCI, comprising Sulakshana Naik, Ashok Malhotra and Jatin Paranjape, named him as the replacement for Salil Ankola on Tuesday.
Ratra joins chief selector Ajit Agarkar, Shiv Sundar Das, Subroto Banerjee and Sridharan Sharath.
The BCCI was looking for a selector from the North Zone after there were two persons representing West Zone — Agarkar and Ankola. While the BCCI’s constitution allows representatives from the same zone in the five-member selection panel, the practice has been to include one each from every zone to provide equal representation to all affiliated units.
Agarkar’s ascendancy in the committee meant that Ankola had to make way though the BCCI’s advertisement for the position made no mention of it.
The season-opening Duleep Trophy will be Ratra’s first assignment.
North Zone’s representation had been vacant since Chetan Sharma resigned as chairman in February 2023 following an undercover TV sting operation.
Ratra played 6 Tests and 12 ODIs after his 2002 debut in Port of Spain. He has also played over 90 first-class matches, scoring close to 4000 runs and had over 240 dismissals for Haryana.
He also scored an unbeaten 115 against the West Indies in his third Test and became the youngest wicket-keeper to score a Test century. He was also the second Indian wicket-keeper to do so in an overseas series.
He has been involved as a head coach with Assam, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and was recently part of VVS Laxman’s interim coaching staff for the ODI series in South Africa late last year, soon after the 50-over World Cup.
