Board of Control for Cricket in India president Anurag Thakur slammed former selection committee chief Sandeep Patil on Sunday, accusing him of being "unethical", in response to Patil's controversial comments earlier in the month about Indian cricketers Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar.
Thakur came down severely on Patil and hinted at the former Indian batsman being penalised in the near future, "Let me make it very clear. Sandeep [Patil] being a former chairman should not have made these comments. When he was the chairman, he replied differently to the same questions. But after that [his tenure], it was different. It was totally unethical of him to do that," Thakur told PTI. "One should refrain from making such unethical and unwanted comments in this area."
Thakur also cast a pall over Patil's future prospects, opining that such a breach of confidential information would make make future employers circumspect about hiring the 60-year-old. "Any organisation, if they hire him [Patil], will think 10 times that after leaving the organisation, he will speak about the organisation," Thakur added, before going on to say that "Right people in the BCCI will speak to him soon."
Patil's three-year tenure at the helm of the selection committee ended after after the 15-man squad for India's ongoing Test series against New Zealand was named on September 12. He had recently disclosed that his selection panel would have dropped Sachin Tendulkar before his eventual retirement and that they had also considered removing Mahendra Singh Dhoni from the captaincy role.
After the completion of Patil's contract, BCCI appointed a five-member panel to preside over the selection panel, with the board inviting applications for the job. Upon being quizzed on the lack of international experience in the MSK Prasad-led panel, Thakur blamed conflict on interest as the main reason behind established yesteryear names shying away from the post. Thakur said, "People are shying away from getting into the BCCI. Former cricketers who run academies and have some role in the state associations are ruled out under Conflict of Interest. What does a cricketer do after retirement if he can't contribute to the game of cricket?"
Thakur also took a dig at the Lodha committee's recommendation of having a three-member panel at the helm, as opposed to BCCI appointing a five-member panel, and claimed that most of the applicants gave their approval to the board's decision. "I am pleased to say that 99.9 percent [of the applicants] said they want a minimum of five-member selection panel. With India being such a vast country, how do you do justice to the job with three selectors? There should be at least five," said the BCCI president.