Former India chief selector Sandeep Patil has revealed why legendary cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan had to leave the Indian team or retire during his tenure.
Patil served as India’s chairman of selectors from 2012 to 2016. During this period, Indian cricket went through a major transition, with several senior players making way for younger cricketers.
The quartet played a key role in India’s ODI World Cup 2011 win. While Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan ended the tournament as the leading run-scorer and wicket-taker respectively for the team, Gambhir scored a brilliant knock of 97 runs in the final against Sri Lanka. Yuvraj Singh was awarded Player of the tournament for scoring 362 runs and taking 15 wickets.
Patil said on the Great Indian Cricket show on Doordarshan, “Whatever decisions we made, we made with the future of Indian cricket in mind. It feels very bad to bring this up today, but legends as great as Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, and Zaheer Khan had to leave the team or retire. They know the reasons. Our job as selectors was to put the interests of the country, the BCCI, and Indian cricket first.”
The 1983 World Cup-winning player admitted sometimes the selectors need to take a tough call for the benefit of Indian cricket.
“You can be friends with players, but there has to be a line. You can’t say, ‘He is my friend, so I will pick him for the team.’ When you are given this responsibility, you have to take it seriously. You are not thinking about your own cricket; you are thinking about India’s cricket and its future. You sometimes have to make decisions you are not happy with, but you make them for the good of the Indian team,” said Patil (via the aforementioned source).
