The BCCI’s AGM did not decide Agarkar’s future, and his contract has 16 days left

The Board of Control for Cricket in India got through its 95th annual general meeting in Mumbai on Friday without answering the one question Indian cricket had been waiting on. Ajit Agarkar’s future as chairman of selectors was not settled. It was handed to somebody else to settle.

The member units authorised the board’s office bearers to take decisions on the selection committees. “The office bearers have been authorised to take decisions on the matters concerning the selection committees,” a senior board official said afterwards. A resolution is expected in days rather than weeks, which is just as well. Agarkar’s contract runs out on 4 October, which is 16 days away.

A delegation, not a decision

Agarkar has held the job since 4 July 2023, when the three-member Cricket Advisory Committee put his name forward unanimously. Friday was the last time the full membership was scheduled to sit in one room before his term ends, and it passed the call up to a handful of office bearers rather than taking it.

That is not unusual governance. An AGM is a room full of state associations, not a hiring panel, and pushing an employment matter to the executive is the normal route. What it means in practice is that the decision now gets made in private, on a timetable nobody outside the board can see, while a home series and a squad selection sit in the diary either side of it.

The mood has turned in a week

Earlier this month the briefing out of the board was that both sides wanted an extension and a few issues needed ironing out. By 16 September that had changed. A one-year extension no longer looked likely, and none of the board’s senior decision-makers were said to have spoken to Agarkar about his future at all. The selection meeting held that same day, to pick the West Indies white-ball squads, was reported as possibly his last piece of work in the job.

The board has never said it intends to replace him. It has also never said it intends to keep him, and the silence has done most of the talking.

Why a change would not be quick

Even if the office bearers decide to move on, a successor cannot simply be installed. The BCCI is bound by a formal process: the position is advertised publicly and candidates are interviewed before anything is signed. No reconstitution has begun. Parthiv Patel, the former India wicketkeeper-batter who joined Gujarat Titans as batting and assistant coach ahead of IPL 2025, is the name in circulation, though that is reporting and not an appointment.

Run that process properly and India could spend a stretch of the home season without a confirmed chairman of selectors. An extension for Agarkar takes one signature and no advertisement. That asymmetry has decided more of these than anybody at the board would like to admit.

Five more chairs are also empty

The senior panel is not the only vacancy on the desk. Five posts on the junior selection committee were advertised on 24 August. Interviews still have not been scheduled, and the appointments are now expected towards the end of September. Several members had assumed the AGM would clear that backlog. It did not.

Junior selection feeds the age-group teams, so five empty seats there is a structural problem rather than a headline one. It has been sitting quietly behind a louder story.

What the AGM did finish

Plenty else was signed off. Arun Singh Dhumal and M Khairul Jamal Majumdar were elected and inducted into the IPL Governing Council as the general body’s two representatives. The audited accounts for 2025-26 were adopted and the 2026-27 budget approved. The membership unanimously cleared an enhanced payment structure for umpires and match referees, along with a reclassification, and adopted an updated age verification policy.

It also agreed to mark the IPL’s 20th edition in 2027 on a grand scale and began the groundwork for the BCCI’s centenary, a year-long programme running from December 2027 through 2028.

The squad that is actually at stake

None of this stops the day job. India host West Indies from 27 September, when the first ODI is played at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram, and the selection meetings have gone ahead through all of it without interruption.

The real prize sits further out. The 2027 ODI World Cup runs from 4 October to 21 November across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and whoever holds this job through next year picks the squad that goes there. That is what the office bearers are deciding this week, and they are deciding it with 16 days on the contract.

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