Just a couple of days back, Indian squad for the T20 World cup 2024 was announced. And as usual there were a lot of discussions and debates on whether it was an ideal squad or not. Exclusion of some of the prominent names was surprising, yet necessary and similarly was the inclusion of a few names. And similar was the case when either inclusion or omission of some players seemed to be slightly unnecessary. But what goes on in the minds of fans, and what goes on in the minds of selectors and players is totally different. And hence it is really important to convey the thought process behind the selection.

That's where the press conference comes into picture. Its a great way for the masses to know on what exactly was the thought process for selecting a particular player, and for rejecting some others. Although explaining it to the players individually is the only protocol of the board, the public explanation just helps the case. The captain and the selector giving a clarification for their ideas is not really necessary, but in a cricket crazy country like India where every cricket lover is potentially an analyst, it helps to calm the minds of most of them.

And it was clearly evident from the events which happened post the squad announcement for 2024 T20 World Cup. Every fan, and particularly the fanbases were asking questions for excluding their favourite player. And they received satisfactory answers from Indian skipper Rohit Sharma and chief selector Ajit Agarkar. The duo explained every scenario very well and gave answers on why the experienced KL Rahul was not selected, or why Rinku was not selected and so on. They also answered some stupid questions like team combination of the match happening on 5th June a month earlier on 2nd May.

But as a fan, it is a satisfactory thing to witness things like these happen, where the reporters don't fear to ask difficult questions and where the men in question don't mind to give satisfactory answers to all the asked questions. It was a conference which was completely opposite of what happened when Boucher and Pandya did it for Mumbai Indians. Honestly, these kind of press conferences were a common phenomenon until the 2016. But it slowly vanished with time and then the conferences were never seen again, until the duo of Agarkar and Rohit decided to get the old things back before Asia cup.

The lack of these press conferences led to a lot of consequences which will hardly be recoverable. The lack of clarity for selecting a few and omitting a few players got the social media go bonkers to speak about their favourite players. The PR agencies of all the players them got a golden opportunity to flourish and ensure that they are making their players look like a victim of politics. And it all combined with the exponentially increased use of internet due to Jio launch, made things worse for the cricketing atmosphere. The increased viewership of the IPL, the increased social media toxicity and lack of clarity and transperancy in selection eventually led to creation of toxic fanbases of players, who now go to any extent to demoralise and troll other players. And to avoid these, a press conference was always needed.

And identifying the need of the same, duo of Rohit Sharma and selector Ajit Agarkar restarted the old tradition. In a generation where now the toxic fanbases still exist and troll other players, Rohit Sharma and Agarkar have shown great courage to come out in public and acknowledge the public justifying the reasons for some players who are not selected. Because ultimately, being a selector is a thankless job. Selecting only 15 players from a pool of talents is a tedious job, and there are some talents which are certainly bound to be on the bench. Some day it is some player, other day it is the other one. But the trolls would always be incoming no matter how good a team one selects. Hence, it is laudable when someone has the guts to come and justify their selection. We thank Rohit Sharma and Ajit Agarkar to host the press conference and we hope to see other upcoming captains continue this tradition.