The 'Indian team' which was not talked about after the T20- WC triumph

India's well deserved victory in the 2024 T20 World cup threw the nation into a frenzy. Crores of fans who have been supporting the national cricket team regardless of the inability to cross the line and emerge on top in all the ICC Tournaments in the past 10 years finally got their reward after a tense final.

The Captain Rohit Sharma, coach Rahul Dravid and his support staff of batting, bowling and fielding coaches, throwdown specialists and physios must be given full credit along with the other team members who contributed throughout the tournament. But another team which works in the background, visits different locations across the vast nation to watch, shortlist and pick players unfortunately did not get the credit due for them - Ajit Agarkar & his team of selectors.

Ajit Agarkar, Shiv Sundar Das, Subroto Banerjee, Salil Ankola and S Sharath must have worked very hard and thought about several factors while determining the squads for the three major global tournaments in which India managed to reach the final - World Test Championship, ODI World Cup ( both 2023) and the T20 World Cup in 2024 - though Agarkar took over after the WTC final. Three final appearances with a trophy included must be a satisfying achievement though India will still brood about misfiring in the last lap which cost them a clean sweep of the trophies across formats.

The selection committee appears to have worked well in tandem with the Indian captain and the coach. With abundance of talent available ( which was always the case in India) and youngsters facing high class opponents in big stages since the inception of IPL, the selectors' jobs have become tougher. Any player not performing up to the mark if given a longer run, is criticized and the selectors too bear the brunt of the general public at times.

After Chetan Sharma was forced to resign as the chairman, Ajit Agarkar took over and India have managed to put together a string of very good performances - of course the credit goes to players and the support staff but nothing so far has been talked about the background staff who spend time analyzing the performance and map players to needs which arise from the think tank.

Ajit Agarkar still holds several records for India including the fastest half century in ODIs- he is still the fastest Indian to 50, 200 and 250 ODI wickets too and remains in the top 5 when it comes to the number of wickets/average. He led Mumbai to their Ranji trophy title in 2013 and was a member of the 2007 T20 World Cup team which clinched the trophy inaugural championship.

By working with Rahul Dravid, the National Cricket Academy and the senior players in the Indian team and ensuring that everyone has clarity on the availability of players, and most importantly the captain is comfortable with the squad he gets, Agarkar seems to have shut the doors on controversies to a very large extent. Though India as a nation can field close to 3 different teams with similar skill sets if mapped one-one, the experience and attitude to step up in big occasions helped the selected players to take Indian cricket to greater heights in the past couple of years. Hopefully, the world cup triumph will open the doors to more global trophies.