Alarmed at the performance of the teams at the various levels, some senior club secretaries met the top brass of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) to express their grievances at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Uppal on Saturday.
The club secretaries, which included former office-bearer Prakash Chand Jain, former Hyderabad players J Shivaji Yadav and Vanka Pratap, met acting president Sardar Daljeet Singh, joint secretary T Basava Raju and CEO Imtiaz Khan and discussed the issue with them. The secretaries blamed the senior and junior selection panels for the performances of the Hyderabad teams this season.
The club officials expressed serious concern over the manner of selections and said the selectors were not being transparent. They said that players who had excelled in league cricket and other HCA tournaments this season were not being selected. They said the selectors were not only doing injustice to talented players but were also ruining their careers. This, they expressed, was detrimental to the interests of cricket in Hyderabad.
Picking up data from the HCA records, they said some of the players like Sai Vikas Reddy and HK Simha were being given a raw deal by the selectors. They said that Sai Vikas Reddy had scored 752 runs with five hundreds this season but has been ignored.
Similarly, Simha had 486 runs with three hundreds to his credit. Simha had also represented the state in the Under-16, Under-19 and Under-25 teams and had scored 100s at each level. He had also scored a double century and had carried his bat through the innings twice in the Under-23/25 tournaments.
Another player was Mayank Gupta, who had scored 521 runs with two hundreds this season. Gupta had also captained the Hyderabad Under-23 team last season (2024-25) and remained the top performer at the All-India level. Though Gupta was selected and made captain of the Under-23 team this season, he was removed from the team after the first two games as his performance was below par.
Secretaries blame HCA administrators for neglecting players
The members felt such a highly talented player should have been given a couple of more opportunities and he should have been properly counselled and groomed. Instead of someone sitting with the boy and working out his problems, the selectors, coaches and the HCA administrators just dumped the player from the team. “It is time the officials take full responsibility of each and every player who plays for the state. The players should be counselled and motivated to do well,” a club secretary said.
They were of the opinion that though these players had the ability to stay at the wicket and play a long innings, which is the main criteria for multi-day tournaments, they were not given a single opportunity to play for the state in the longer version (read Ranji Trophy) of the game.
The club secretaries also said as a result many of the selected players were not able to perform well and that was the main reason for Hyderabad’s poor performance in Ranji Trophy this season.
With the Ranji Trophy campaign coming to a premature end, the club secretaries urged the HCA top brass to ensure that deserving and talented players are given a chance to play for the state. As there are only two Ranji Trophy matches left, they felt that some of these youngsters should be drafted into the squad and given a chance to play. This, they felt, would help prepare the youngsters for the next season. They also said the selectors should select some of these boys for the remaining U-23 BCCI games to instill confidence in the players that they too can play the game at the higher levels.
