5 Players treated unfairly by the selectors

Bhargav Bhatt

Bhargav Bhatt was unfairly overlooked after a splendid 2010-11 Ranji season (Pic courtesy: Hotstar)

You can be forgiven for not knowing anything about this left-arm spinner from Baroda. His fifteen minutes of fame, unfortunately, didn’t come from anything that happened on the field but due to his presence in a sting operation where he refused to get lured into spot-fixing.

But in the 2010-11 domestic season, Bhargav Bhatt emerged as the best spin bowler in the country and was the leading wicket-taker in the Ranji Trophy’s elite division. His 47 wickets came in 9 matches at an average of just over 21 and strike-rate of 45.

So, you would have expected him to be given a chance to prove his mettle in international cricket. But the selectors didn’t just deny him an opportunity to play for the national team but even ignored him for the Rest of India Irani Cup squad!

What makes the whole case outrageous was the decision of the selectors to give Punjab’s leg-spinner Rahul Sharma a place in both the Indian one-day and Test team as well as the Irani Cup squad. This despite the bowler having a very ordinary first-class record.

So, why did the selectors take such an unfair call? Simply because the leg-spinner from Punjab had done well in IPL while Bhatt hadn’t. So, IPL performances were being given primacy over the hard yards done in Ranji Trophy.

The whole idea of Irani Cup is to have the best players of the season performing against the champion side. Yet, Bhatt was superseded by Sharma there too.

Bhatt has now disappeared into the mass of first-class cricketers and no longer likely to come back into the team.