Step-motherly treatment has been dished out to Ambati Rayudu, says former selector Sandeep Patil

Ambati Rayudu has received a lot of sympathy and adulation after he announced his retirement from all forms of the game including IPL the other day. He was set to travel to England with the World Cup squad and bat at number four but things turned worse for Rayudu since the turn of the year. His form with the bat wasn’t good and at the same time, Vijay Shankar impressed the selectors and eventually flew to England with the team.

Many of the former cricketers and experts have taken a dig at the Indian selection committee led by MSK Prasad. They have been targeted for their treatment of the Hyderabad batsman who had given up First Class cricket in December last year to focus on his ODI career and making it into the World Cup. Even former selection committee chairman Sandeep Patil has come out now and slammed MSK Prasad.

This is sad and badly handled, says Patil

“This is sad. The step-motherly treatment has been dished out to Rayudu and all this has been handled very badly,” Patil was quoted as saying by mid-day. Vijay Shankar was picked over Rayudu by the selectors going for his 3-dimensional abilities of batting, bowling, and fielding. This even led to Rayudu putting out a tweet that he was going to buy 3D glasses to watch the World Cup, taking a dig at selectors.

Though BCCI didn’t take any action on Ambati Rayudu, it seemed like he shot himself in the foot with that viral tweet, after Rishabh Pant and Mayank Agarwal were chosen over him as replacements for injured Shikhar Dhawan and Shankar respectively. Sandeep Patil also touched upon the issue of Mayank over Rayudu and mentioned that he had nothing against Mayank Agarwal and that he is an outstanding batsman.

“Look, Mayank is a good player and we cannot say that there has been any bungling simply because we have reached the semi-finals of the tournament. But somewhere I would say that all this doesn’t do justice to the horses for courses policy. I had Rayudu in my team for the World Cup,” Patil added.

It has to be noted here that Ambati Rayudu made his India debut in 2013 at the age of 27 when Patil was the national selector and had coached him during the India A days. Ambati Rayudu played over 60 ODIs and six T20Is for India, while he didn’t get to play any Tests.