Niranjan Shah welcomes BCCI’s decision to release Test players to play Ranji matches

AHMEDABAD: Former BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah on Friday welcomed the board’s decision to release Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Stuart Binny from the Indian Test squad playing the first Test against South Africa in Mohali in order to allow them to play in the Ranji Trophy matches.
The three players, who were left out of the ongoing Test, will rejoin the Indian team before the start of the second Test of the four-match series in Bangalore.Punjab Ranji Trophy players, Gurkeerat Singh Mann and Mandeep Singh will assist the Indian team as reserve players during the Mohali Test.
“This is a very good decision but I would have liked to see the same logic applied during the Board President XI’s game against South Africa recently where three players were just warming the bench when they could have played for their respective state teams in the Ranji trophy,” said Shah, who is also the honoraray secretary of the Saurashtra Cricket Association.
In the past, Saurashtra has suffered due to the board’s reluctance to release players to play for their state teams during bilateral series at home. A recent example is when Saurashtra missed the services of Cheteshwar Pujara while playing the Ranji Trophy final against Mumbai in 2013.
Pujara was picked in the 15-member Indian ODI squad after his brilliant show in the Test series against England. In the four matches that he played against the visiting team, Pujara scored 438 runs at an average of 87.60, a highest score of 206 not out and scored two hundreds.
But despite that the then skipper MS Dhoni making it very obvious that Pujara has to wait before he makes his ODI debut and repeated requests from SCA, the board didn’t release Pujara and Saurashtra lost the final against Mumbai, bolstered by Sachin Tendulkar’s presence, by an innings and 125 runs. Pujara was in tremendous form that season and though he just played three Ranji matches, he scored 629 runs with a highest score of 352 against Karnataka.
“The wicket was difficult to bat on and we had a pretty young team except Sitanshu Kotak. So we always felt that Pujara’s presence could have made a difference in that match,” added Shah. (With agencies)