Govt nominees step in to save the day, name Ajay Jadeja as Delhi coach, set up selection panels

Tuesday ended on a bitter note for many officials at the home of Delhi cricket. All the top warring Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) officials got kicked on their backside as the government nominees swung into action following confusion over the appointment of coaches and selectors. With the judges, overseeing sports working committee elections, not declaring the results even after two weeks have passed and they’ve been into the election process for about 80 days, DDCA’s government nominees finally put their foot down and took a strong decision, appointing two sets of selectors – for junior and senior cricket and also appointing Ajay Jadeja as the chief coach of Delhi cricket.

That should put the catfight among officials to rest, at least for now. In DDCA’s parlance, ‘government nominees ne officials ko phatte lagaya’.

The three nominees, Parvesh Verma, Rajan Tiwari and Sunil Yadav sent out a letter saying they had been upset with the news stories published across all newspapers on Saturday, the 12^th September, that ridiculed DDCA’s factionalism which resulted in three sets of teams going out to the press. Equally worse was the tussle over appointment of coaches and mentor.

The trio stated that they are appointing Ajay Jadeja as chief coach of Delhi replacing Vijay Dahiya from last year. Dahiya had been a favourite of Vinod Tihara group. The nominees have set up a senior selection committee, which will look after the Ranji Trophy and U-23 teams with Vinay Lamba as chairman. Hari Gidwani and Rahul Sanghvi will be the other two selectors in the three-member panel.

The three-member junior selection committee will be chaired by Nikhil Chopra, who will be assisted by Suresh Luthra and Sunil Valson.

The government nominees had proposed this and the proposal was duly signed by the 12 directors.

It has been learnt that vice-president Chetan Chauhan has threatened to resign from the post following this decision. He had proposed the name of Madan Lal as mentor, which was protested by Vinod Tihara group. Surinder Khanna was appointed as assistant coach by Ashok Sharma group. After attending the first day of nets, he didn’t appear on the second day.

Apparently, captain Gautam Gambhir was annoyed at all the events and didn’t turn up on the second day when the Delhi team only had their warm-up and fitness exercises. There is a belief that he had a whiff of things to come so he didn’t attend the camp.

Amid all this confusion and expecting that there will be brouhaha over selection of the team, the nominees took this strong step. Some unconfirmed sources say that the push had come from the top echelons of polity, the finance minister of the country, who had been the president of the DDCA till last year and who was apprised of the situation.

Whatever be the case and whoever was behind this, the decision has at least saved Delhi cricket’s face for the time being.