New Delhi, Sep 18 (IANS) Thursday was a marathon day of interviews for the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) in terms of filling seven vacancies across the senior men’s, senior women’s, and junior men’s national selection committees. Last month, the BCCI had earlier invited applications for filling two positions in the senior men’s committee, four positions in the senior women’s panel, and one in the junior men’s committee.

For the vacant senior men’s selectors posts, former India players R.P. Singh, Pragyan Ojha, and Amay Khurasiya were interviewed. The selected candidates will be needed to replace the outgoing duo of S. Sharath (South Zone) and Subroto Banerjee (Central Zone).

Though former men’s pacer Praveen Kumar had also applied for being a member of the committee, IANS understands that Praveen was asked to apply at the last minute. It is also understood that while Pragyan Ojha is a front-runner to replace Sharath from South Zone, there could be a toss-up between Singh and Khurasiya for the slot from the Central Zone.

Sharath, meanwhile, was also interviewed for the lone vacancy in the junior men’s selection panel and is most likely to come in for Thilak Naidu to be the committee chairman, ahead of the U19 World Cup happening next year. Sharath had been the chief selector when India won the 2022 U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup in the West Indies.

In terms of women’s selectors, IANS understands that Amita Sharma, Sravanthi Naidu, Anagha Deshpande, and Diana David were interviewed. It is also understood that former India player and coach Purnima Rao, along with Mamatha Maben, Rajani Venugopal, and Bindeshwari Goyal, are in the applicants’ mix.

But whether their interviews took place on Thursday or not wasn’t known at the time of publishing. There was also a murmur of former India captain Anjum Chopra applying for a place in the women’s selection panel, but it was later confirmed by sources that she hadn’t applied.

The two-member CAC will submit its recommendations to the BCCI, with final names of the successful applications scheduled to be approved during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) at its headquarters in Mumbai on September 28. It’s also the day when a new set of office bearers will be elected.

–IANS

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