Wasim Jaffer retains Mumbai captaincy

All speculations over Wasim Jaffer’s Mumbai captaincy came to an end on Monday when he was named as captain of the 39-time Ranji Trophy-winning side for the forthcoming season.

Critics had questioned Jaffer’s captaincy when Mumbai performed below expectations last season losing to underdogs Rajasthan in the Ranji Trophy quarterfinals. However, the selectors reiterated their faith in the former India player by taking a unanimous decision of retaining him.

Under Jaffer, Mumbai won twice in three years. “It was a unanimous decision to name Wasim as the captain. He has been a prolific run-scorer and one of the senior-most members of our side. You can’t blame him for just one bad day. The loss to Rajasthan was just one off result and I think we will be able to fight back,” said Mumbai chief selector Milind Rege.

The selectors also picked a huge 45-member probable list of the senior team instead of the usual 30. “We want to build a bench strength. This will help us find out some good talent,” said Rege. “Basically, we have players from the U-22 side also. It will be a great opportunity for the youngsters to gel with the senior players and learn the game. We want to encourage the youngsters,” added Rege.

The other big names in the probable list are Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Rohit Sharma, Ajit Agarkar, Ramesh Powar and Ajinkya Rahane.

Probables: Wasim Jaffer (Captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Swapnil Salvi, Kaustubh Pawar, Sushant Marathe, Bravish Shetty, Akhil Herwadkar, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Prashant Naik, Suryakumar Yadav, Abhishek Nayar, Siddharth Chitnis, Shoaib Shaikh, Onkar Khanvilkar, Nikhil Patil (Jr), Pankaj Jaiswal, Siddhesh Lad, Parag Khanapurkar, Onkar Gurav, Moondeep Mangela, Shardul Thakur, Santosh Shinde, Aditya Tare, Sufiyan Shaikh, Neelkanth Parab, Ramesh Powar, Iqbal Abdulla, Harmeet Singh, Ankit Chavan, Sagar Gorivale, Gaurav Jathar, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Dhaval Kulkarni,

Aquib Shaikh, Javed Khan, Kshemal Waingankar, Rajesh Verma, Rohan Raje, Murtuza Hussain, Avishkar Salvi, Usman Malvi, Saurabh Netravalkar, Nadeem Mehndi