Pragyan Ojha to Chair India's Selection Panel as Ramesh Powar Joins

Start with an apology of sorts. The BCCI made this announcement on Monday, October 19, and it should have been in that day's sports report. It was not. We are publishing it now to complete the record.

Pragyan Ojha chairs India's senior men's selection committee. The Board of Control for Cricket in India confirmed the former left-arm spinner in the job on seniority, and seniority here is not a courtesy title. Ojha played 24 Tests. Nobody else on the panel has played as many.

Nor is he walking in cold. Agarkar's tenure as chairman ended on October 4, and Ojha has run the committee on an interim basis ever since, New Zealand tour squads included.

The new face is Ramesh Powar. Powar got the nod from the Cricket Advisory Committee. Ashok Malhotra and Jatin Paranjape screened the applicants, interviewed them at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai, and their recommendation was unanimous. The timeline was quick. Applications closed on October 14. Interviews followed a day later, on October 15.

So the panel, all five of them: Ojha in the chair, Shiv Sundar Das, RP Singh, Ajay Ratra and Powar.

Powar takes the West Zone seat Agarkar left behind, and he arrives with an odd CV, short as a player, long as a coach. Two Tests. Thirty-one one-day internationals, all of them between 2004 and 2007. Then the coaching years piled up: an Asia Cup title with the India women's team, a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, stints coaching Mumbai and Gujarat, and time as a bowling coach at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru.

Agarkar is worth a paragraph of his own. He took the chair in July 2023, and the board, in its statement, thanked him for his commitment, conviction and contribution across his tenure. The haul in that time was substantial: three ICC trophies, two Asia Cup titles and gold medals at two straight Asian Games.

What comes next is the 2027 ODI World Cup. This panel picks the squads that carry India toward it.

Who else was in the frame

Powar was not the only name the advisory committee worked through. Cricbuzz reported that Baroda's Connor Williams and Jacob Martin and Mumbai's Wasim Jaffer and Salil Ankola were also interviewed for the vacancy before Malhotra and Paranjape settled on their recommendation.

Powar's coaching name rests mostly on the women's game. He was head coach of the India women's team, the spell that brought the Asia Cup title and the silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, before his later stints with Mumbai and Gujarat and his time at the Centre of Excellence. It is an unusual route onto a men's selection panel, and it is the route the committee chose unanimously.