Mumbai: Former India all-rounder Ajay Jadeja stopped short of calling the National selection committee jokers, but said that he now understood why Mohinder Amaranth had once called selectors a ‘bunch of jokers’.

“The decision to drop Rahul Dravid was quite shocking. You don’t drop players, let alone somebody like Rahul, for not performing in three-four matches.

Moreover, except in two of the matches, in the other games he came in the 42nd or 43rd over where it is difficult to score as many runs as the public wants,” Jadeja said.

“When Ganguly was dropped, they talked of bringing in juniors. A year and a half later, they had to go back to Ganguly. In the same way, they will go back to Rahul after some time. This is not the way to build a team. It seems we are going round and round,” he said. 

Continuing his tirade against the selection panel, Jadeja said “They seem to be making fools of everybody. It seems what Jimmy Amarnath said about them a decade back still holds good,” he said tongue-in-cheek.

Dravid, who resigned from the captaincy after the England tour, had a poor home series against Australia where he scored 55 runs from six games.

However, Dravid’s body of work is too vast and judge him on the basis of a bad patch.  Moreover, the grapevine is rife with rumours of how the selectors decided to give Dravid the boot as he had not informed them about his decision to step down from captaincy. 

One of India’s most successful captain and former coach Ajit Wadekar feels there is no replacement for Rahul Dravid at the moment.

“It was wrong that he was dropped from the side. There is no replacement for Dravid at the moment. The selectors should have at least informed him before that they are resting him for the first two games. He needs to be treated well as he is great player who has performed consistently for the team.”

Wadekar said there can be two reasons for Dravid’s exclusion from the squad. “I suppose that they went on his poor form in the last series and the second is that they think that the seniors should be given some rest.”

Former India manager to the tour of England Chandu Borde said it is the committee’s decision.

Source : DNAIndia