The Indian Cricket Team’s chief selector Ajit Agarkar is going to become the most senior Indian cricketer in the selection committee and is in a position to do so at the end of September. Agarkar’s tenure as the Chief Selector was officially over in June, with the Board of Control for Cricket in India giving him a short 3-month extension. Dainik Jagran writes that VVS Laxman is most likely to replace him and take over the selection panel. Laxman heads the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru and has been there since he joined the world's top coaching institute in 2021.
The move will bring Laxman to the next level in Indian cricket. The former stylish batsman had already been aspiring to become the head coach of India in 2021 but Rahul Dravid was selected after he left the National Cricket Academy as the head coach. When there was a coaching vacancy in 2024 Laxman didn’t take the job and continued the work at the development centre. Now it is the selection committee that will be the main route for the veteran.
If we look at his credentials in this regard, he meets the minimum requirements for the board to admit him into the high-profile role. In BCCI rules a candidate who wishes to be selected for the selection panel must have been retired from the game for at least the last 5 years and since Laxman quit international cricket in 2012, he is well within that. In addition to that, past Board advertisements require that an aspirant have played at least 7 Test or 30 first-class matches or a mixture of 10 One Day Internationals and 20 first-class matches. Laxman has done so in a successful career that has seen India play 134 Test and 86 ODIs and a complete list of 267 first-class and 173 List A games.
The board's long-standing tradition is the panelist with the highest number of Test caps among the selectors immediately becomes chief selector. Laxman is India's third-most capped player in the longest format of the game and behind Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. This is because Dravid has already left his high-pressure position as India's head coach for 2021-2024 and will not return to choose for selection, Laxman is a potential candidate who is regarded as the best person to lead India's selection process going forward.
