‘Shreyas Iyer, Tilak Varma don’t deserve guaranteed seats’: Mohammad Kaif questions Indian management challenges

Tilak Varma & Shreyas Iyer Former Indian cricketer Mohammad Kaif expressed his disappointment over the team selection appointing Shreyas Iyer as captain and Tilak Varma as vice-captain.Kaif said on his YouTube channel that the two batsmen did not deserve a guaranteed place in the playing eleven but were still given leadership roles. Kaif called Tilak’s selection a “50-50 call” and claimed that making Iyer and Varma captain and vice-captain ultimately led to Sanju Samson’s dismissal.“You’ve made two players captain and vice-captain who probably don’t even deserve a guaranteed place in the playing eleven every game. Yes, Tilak is a 50-50 call. He’s won games and played well. I’m not denying that. But the problem is that you don’t have any flexibility anymore. Once you make them captain and vice-captain, they automatically stop falling,” Kaju said, dropping out.Kaif went on to say that the people who named Iyer as captain should be heard, adding that he could not recall a player who would directly return to the T20I side as captain.“That’s why I feel dropping Sanju was a huge decision. You could have handled the situation differently. If Shreyas Iyer wasn’t the captain, you could have told him, ‘You’ve led well and earned your place back in the team, but now there’s no place for you in the playing eleven. Wait for your opportunity. Stay with the team and see how it goes.’“First we will give these three players (Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Suryavanshi and Samson) a chance. The people who made this decision deserve to be heard. I don’t think it has ever happened in the history of Indian cricket where someone who wasn’t even part of the T20 team came straight back as captain. I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” he added.In the ongoing T20I series against England, Iyer scored 110 runs while Tilak collected 40 runs. The duo will also lead India in the fourth match of the five-match T20I series on Thursday.