The National selection committee will continue to comprise five members until the Supreme Court appointed administrators decide on the future course of action.
The Lodha Committee had recommended only Test players to be nominated as senior selectors and the committee was to be restricted to three.
> Read: India's limited-overs squads to be finalised on Friday
The current committee has chairman MSK Prasad (six Tests, 96 first class matches), Sarandeep Singh (3 Tests, 92 FCM) and Devang Gandhi (4 Tests, 95 FCM), who meet the Lodha Committee norms, and Gagan Khoda (2 ODIs, 132 FCM) and Jatin Paranjpe (4 ODIs, 62 FCM).
The earliest suggestions for a three-member National selection committee had come from former India skipper Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, who did not favour the policy of having zonal representatives.
But the Board officials have all along preferred five members and presented the same argument to the Lodha Panel that it was the number of matches that needed the attention of the selectors. A senior Board official had observed that in the current scenario the pressure on the selectors was more because they had to watch players in three formats of the game and the sheer number of matches required more time and commitment from all the five members.
The selectors are set to meet on Friday in Mumbai to pick the Indian team for the limited overs series against England starting in Pune from January 15. India and England play three One Day Internationals and two T20 matches.
Following the Supreme Court ruling, there was uncertainty regarding the selection panel. According to sources in the Board, the selection on Friday is scheduled to be made by the five members unless there is a directive from the Lodha Panel to restrict it to three Test players.
“As of now we are going ahead with the five-member panel to pick the Indian team for the series against England. We have to meet this immediate requirement because the series against England is less than ten days away. A team has to be picked so that it can have a preparatory camp ahead of the series,” said a Board official.
India’s next international fixture, after the series against England, is the one-off Test against Bangladesh in Hyderabad from February 8 by which time the new set of administrators are expected to take charge.
With the top brass of the Board, and practically all state associations wiped out, the day to day affairs of the Board were being handled by the BCCI CEO Rahul Johri and BCCI General Manager for Cricket Operations M.V. Sridhar.
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