This is unfortunate. Shreyas Iyer Remember, it is neither his fault nor ours. He has to wait for his chance,” said India’s chief selector Ajit Agarkar while announcing the T20I squad for the Asia Cup last August. IPL In the season he scored 604 runs at a strike rate of 174 and led Punjab Kings to the final.Barring Arsdeep Singh, none of the finalists from the previous edition managed to find a place in India’s victorious T20 World Cup team last month. IPL is now in a very interesting phase. It has produced a raft of players that have transformed India into a T20 superpower, but only a handful of big teams dominating the league may end the initial phase.
Chennai Super Kings And Mumbai Indians – two of the most successful franchises – have struggled to maintain consistency as the years go by. In fact, this trend mirrors India’s domestic cricket scene. The center of power does not necessarily end in Mumbai, Karnataka, Delhi or Tamil Nadu anymore.The ‘lesser’ state teams have found a way to make their presence felt, starting with Rajasthan, Vidarbha, Saurashtra and Gujarat. Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand have also risen above the rest. In the IPL, the success of CSK and MI became a model for other franchises. Talent can be drawn from remote areas through some of the elaborate scouting programs run by the franchises.India’s national selectors – a committee of just five former cricketers – can in turn tap scouts from IPL teams.Over the next two months, Agarkar’s committee will closely follow the players who performed well in the IPL. Punjab Kings’ World Cup squad featured none other than Arsdeep, but a closer look at the make-up of the India ‘A’ team over the past year reveals the real story. Names like Priyansh Arya, Prabhasmaran Singh, Ayush Baduni, Ryan Prag, Yudhvir Singh and Vipraj Nigam are now well established. National selectors are often accused of being carried away by IPL performances, but former national selectors claim that the league is a great tool to test the temperament of young players.TOI understands that the selectors have already set their sights for this IPL.One part has to do with identifying fresh talent and tracking how standout talent from last season is working to achieve consistency. The second part involves keeping an eye on the basic monitoring of the ODI team ahead of next year’s World Cup. For instance, the selectors will keep a close eye on the progress of fast bowlers Mayank Yadav and Abdul Samad from LSG. But they will also see how Rishabh Pant is kept. Pant has been a part of the ODI team for the last two years but has only got one match.Hardik Pandya’s bowling fitness will also be monitored. Next is Nitish Kumar Reddy, whose development as a seven-bowling all-rounder will be watched. Franchises and national selectors exist side by side, yet the objective is independent of each other. The IPL has grown so much that national selectors need not limit themselves to table toppers to scout new talent.
