‘How have you selected Harshit Rana?’ – Sadagoppan Ramesh questions BCCI selectors ahead of Ireland & England T20Is

Sadagoppan Ramesh questioned the Indian team management and the selectors about the reason behind selecting Harshit Rana in India’s T20I squads for the series against Ireland and England and the subsequent Asian Games.

Rana sustained a ligament injury on his right knee, which ruled him out of the T20 World Cup earlier this year. The right-arm pacer also missed the entire IPL season and is not a part of India’s 50-over squad, which will face Afghanistan in three ODIs this month.

Ramesh mentioned the previous precedent that had been set, where players who recovered from an injury had to showcase their fitness in the domestic circuit before earning a recall to the national team.

“How have you selected Harshit Rana? I don’t think he has played any domestic cricket after knee surgery. Nobody knows the answer to this. Just imagine Shami’s mind voice now, or even the others’ mind voice,” Ramesh said on his Instagram handle.

“They had to play domestic cricket to be considered for selection” – S Ramesh shares examples of other Indian players

The cricketer-turned-expert shared examples of players like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami, and new T20I captain Shreyas Iyer, who had to prove their fitness in domestic cricket before making a comeback to the national team. Shami hasn’t been able to earn a recall for over a year despite bowling plenty of overs in domestic cricket and in the IPL.

“Whether it was a Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma, the management said they had to play domestic cricket to be considered for selection. Even when Hardik Pandya got injured, he was asked to prove his fitness for selection. For Shami, they questioned if he could bowl longer spells after injury and asked him to prove himself after injury,” said Ramesh (via the aforementioned source).

“The current T20I skipper, Shreyas Iyer, himself was asked to prove his fitness before the New Zealand ODIs by playing the Vijay Hazare Trophy. There are many such examples like this. So they’ve set the precedent that if a player has to come back into the Indian team, especially after injury, he must prove himself and his fitness in domestic cricket.”