Selectors’ age cap issue: Bedi, Azad score moral win over DDCA

New Delhi, Dec 23 : Wednesday was a day to forget for the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) as it copped twin embarrassment. A day after former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi wrote to Delhi’s parent cricket body to remove his name associated with the Arun Jaitley Stadium and scrap his membership, he — and his former Delhi teammate Kirti Azad — on Wednesday scored a moral victory over an age cap rule that denied Azad the opportunity to become a Delhi selector.
The DDCA seemed to beat a hasty retreat when the issue of the 60-year cap for picking senior selectors for the 2020-21 domestic season was adjudicated by its Ombudsman Justice (retired) Badar Durrez Ahmed, who ruled that the present Ashu Dani-led committee would be allowed to select the Delhi team only for the T20 Syed Mushtaq Trophy that begins on January 10.
This, by inference, means that if the national championship for the Ranji Trophy is played after the T20 Syed Mushtaq Trophy, the DDCA senior selection committee could change.
Justice Badar apparently allowed the present selection committee to pick the Delhi team only because there is a December 25 deadline set by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for its affiliates to submit their teams’ lists.
“It is made clear that the question of legitimacy or otherwise of placing the age bar at 60 years is left open. It is also made clear that the Senior Selectors selected by the CAC [Cricket Advisory Committee] on 19.12.2020 will function as such only for selection of players for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy Tournament 2020-21,” wrote Justice Badar in his three-page order.
DDCA counsel, Additional Solicitor General of India Aishwarya Bhati, seems to be putting the blame on the Atul Wassan-led CAC as she quoted from the supposedly confidential minutes of the two CAC meetings that give the impression that this committee, and not the DDCA apex council, decided to not call applicants above 60 for interviews.