It has turned out to be a classic case of the selectors closing the doors after the horses have bolted. After losing to Mumbai and prior to that conceding the first innings lead to Vidarbha, Hyderabad are now placed in the sixth position in an eight-team Elite Group B of the Col CK Nayudu Trophy.
Before this round of matches started, Hyderabad had a chance of competing for a knock-out spot, but the two adverse results have now drastically reduced their chances of making the knock-outs.
With two more matches remaining, the selectors have sacked skipper Mayank Gupta and brought in P Aman Rao, who missed the previous two games because the Senior Selection Committee had drafted him into the Ranji Trophy squad for their matches against Mumbai and Chhattisgarh. Hyderabad had lost to Mumbai and failed to drive home their advantage against Chhattisgarh, who stole a point in a drawn encounter.
Aman, the swashbuckling opener, may have been more productive for the Hyderabad Under-23 team in the previous two games than he was for the Ranji Trophy team. But the Wise Men of Hyderabad cricket had other thoughts and plans. However, those plans may not have borne fruit is an altogether different matter.
Strange case of Khush Agarwal
Another strange case is that of Khush Agarwal. He has been popping in and out of the main squad. Khush has been named in all the Under-23 squads this season but has yet to play a game. He was part of the 15-member squad for the Vidarbha game but did not play the game. Subsequently, he was dropped from the 15-member squad for the Mumbai game and instead named among the standbys, according to sources after a lot of pressure.
For the game against Assam, Khush, who is the son of Apex Council member Sunil Kumar Agarwal, has been again named in the 15-member squad. Do the selectors have an idea about the players they are selecting or is it just a random thing? How on earth can a player who has been with the squad be dropped without getting a chance? Even more intriguing is how the same player has been brought back into the 15-member squad again?
Will the selectors finally give him a chance against Assam or is this just another case of musical chairs being played out by the selectors? We seem to be living in quite an interesting time indeed.
The team announced on Wednesday will take on bottom-placed Assam at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Uppal from February 6 to 9.
The squad: P Aman Rao (captain), Raghava Pattapu, Wafi Kachchhi, Harshit Choudhary, Rahul Radesh (WK), A Avanish Rao (VC & WK), A Vignesh Reddy, G Rithish Reddy, N Nitin Sai Yadav, Pranav Varma, M Ruthik Yadav, R Dinesh Rathod, Mohd Abdul Adnan, Mohammed Abdul Malik, Khush Agarwal. Standbys: Sarthak Bharadwaj, Shashank Mehrotra, Karan Pattanayak, Rahul Karthikeya, Pranav Suryadevara.
