The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) revamped its grounds and pitches committee recently. Two senior curators, Dhiraj Parsana (West) and PR Vishwanathan (South) have been relieved' of their duties, with Vishwajit Padhiyar (Parsana's assistant at Motera, and previously a co-opted curator from West Zone) and S Sriram of Karnataka (South) being named their replacements.
Incidentally, the decision that the Board were not renewing their contracts was informed by former BCCI general manager (operations) MV Sridhar, who quit on Wednesday (September 27).
Daljeet Singh (North), continues to head the panel, with Tapas Chatterjee (Central) and Ashish Bhowmik also still there. Mumbai's Ramesh Mamunkar is the co-opted member in the committee now from the West Zone, while Chandrashekhar of Hyderabad is the man promoted from the South Zone.
"I think Vishwanathan quit because of personal reasons. He had a knee operation 4-5 months back and he himself requested the Board to discontinue his services. Both he and Parsana have contributed handsomely to the growth of the committee and served it well.
"Vishwanathan was good technically, and Parsana practically. There's no malice, or controversy behind this decision. The Board just wanted to introduce some young blood in this field. All the qualified, certified curators, who've served for the last five-seven years in the Board have been promoted," Singh told ToI on Thursday (September 28).
For Parsana, 69, it was the end of a long innings. A former first class cricketer, he made his debut for Saurashtra back in 1965 and then went on to play for Gujarat and Railways too.
(Courtesy: The Times of India)