MSK Prasad’s tenure as the chief selector of the senior Indian national team ended recently. During his time as the chief of the committee, the selection panel did take a few calls that did not go down well with the Indian cricket fans and a section of the cricket experts. However, credit must be given to him as India had a great run in international cricket across all three formats.
The 45-year-old has now revealed a few of his regrets from his tenure. His first regret is not being able to provide enough opportunities to Karun Nair to cement his place in the Indian Test team. Notably, the Karnataka batsman had scored a triple century against England in 2016 but did not receive enough opportunities after that and was eventually dropped.
“I feel Karun Nair especially after getting that triple century, we didn’t give much opportunties. We could’ve given him that comeback opportunity,” he said in an interaction with Fancode.
“We did give him the England series but he didn’t get a match to play, but someone who scores 300, this happens very rarely in world cricket, and we couldn’t give him a comeback opportunity is really heart-breaking, not only for him, for all of us,” he added.
MSK Prasad also spoke about the entire Ambati Rayudu episode. Rayudu was backed for 12 months in the build-up to the world cup but when the team was being decided for the World Cup, Vijay Shankar’s all-round ability was preferred.
“Second thing is, I also feel bad for Ambati Rayudu, he was in thick and thin of things till the last second of the World Cup and on that day of the selections, he was missed out, there’s no doubt that it’s not only he who felt bad for it, I am sure all of the selection committee, all of the members also feel bad for that,” Prasad further said.
The third regret he mentioned was dropping India’s top-rated spinners at that time R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja from the limited overs-side. While Jadeja successfully made a return to the shorter forms of the game, the team management has no signs of considering Ashwin in limited-overs cricket despite him being India’s proven match-winner in red-ball cricket.
“One more point to stress is, after the Champions Trophy, we had to move on from Ravindra Jadeja and Ashwin and we brought in Kuldeep and Chahal.
“It’s a wonderful move that has paid rich dividends for us for the next couple of years, but let’s not forget that they were no.1 and no.2 test cricketers when they were left out of the ODI side,” MSK Prasad added.