In a bid to address the Ranji Trophy debacle, the Mumbai Cricket Association’s (MCA’s) Cricket Improvement Committee (CIC) had a marathon discussion with the head coach, selection panel, senior players and support staff members.
The CIC meeting, that lasted more than five hours, started with the four members of the committee — Raju Kulkarni who chaired the meeting in the absence of Karsan Ghavri, Kiran Mokashi, Amol Muzumdar and Sahil Kukreja — having an open discussion with the selection committee chaired by Ajit Agarkar.
It was followed by a one-on-one discussion with the two captains in the forgettable Ranji campaign — Dhawal Kulkarni and Siddhesh Lad, their predecessor for the last three seasons Aditya Tare, batting mainstay Shreyas Iyer, former captain Suryakumar Yadav and opener Akhil Herwadkar. India pacer Shardul Thakur couldn’t attend the meeting despite being invited.
It was followed by a session with performance analyst Saurabh Walkar, coach Vinayak Samant along with the physiotherapist and trainer of Mumbai’s team.
Abysmal show
The team, with 17 points from eight games, finished a lowly 10th in the combined points tally of Group A and B and was never in the race for the quarterfinals.
In fact, more than failing to qualify for the knock-outs for the first time since 2007-08, the team was in danger of being relegated to Group C at the start of its last match.
Besides unavailability of seniors, Mumbai’s Ranji season was marred by lack of leadership, alleged differences between players and the support staff, lack of initiative and commitment by some of the seniors and the rookies’ inability to step up.
It would be interesting to see if the CIC recommends some harsh steps, especially at the club level, to help Mumbai improve its supply line and leadership abilities.
Ghavri resigns
Meanwhile, the CIC meeting didn’t start on an expected note with Karsan Ghavri, the senior-most member, resigning from the high-profile committee citing personal reasons.
“I have informed the MCA authorities and some of my colleagues in the CIC that I wish to resign,” Ghavri told Sportstar. “There is no question of having hard feelings about anyone or anything. It’s just that for the last two months, I have been travelling a lot and couldn’t spare time for the CIC meetings, so I thought it’s better to make way for someone who can devote more time for the improvement of MCA.”
“We all had agreed that will to succeed is not there, its missing I would say. We asked them why not playing like the old Mumbai team in that particular attititude is missing. And we are going to work on that, so hopefully we can solve those," Kulkarni said after the meeting.
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