Next month, he is going to complete three years in the role. There have been some great successes during this time and some great failures too. India won three ICC trophies but were whitewashed by New Zealand and South Africa in Tests at home. But those were not his faults. His job is to select players, and he has been pretty much spot on with that.

Agarkar himself was a smart cricketer in his day. At a time when India had a dearth of fast bowlers, he had enough pace to make an average Indian fan feel proud. He could consistently bowl at 140 kmph. Anyway, as a selector, he has been fair, to say the least.

Indian selectors are often forced to have their region’s interests at heart, and as a result, sometimes their decisions may have a tinge of bias, but Agarkar can be given a clean chit in that regard. The only real mistake he has made during his tenure so far was giving his complicity to the promotion of Shubman Gill in T20Is at the expense of Sanju Samson. But in hindsight, he and Gautam Gambhir were not entirely wrong. They had to take a chance. Gill was already captaining Test and ODI teams and had done a good job. So they thought, maybe he could be made T20I captain too. But once he realised he had made a mistake after Gill failed to impress in a series of chances, he didn’t take long to make amends and showed Gill the door. The recall of Ishan Kishan for the 2026 T20 World Cup is another case in point.

He has been ruthless many times. After India lost 3-1 in Australia in 2024-25, he ensured Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were not part of India’s Test scheme of things anymore. Gambhir often gets the flak for those calls, but if you think about it, it couldn’t have happened if Agarkar wasn’t on the same page.

He actually wanted someone who could retain his place and guide the team till the 2027 World Cup. Rohit’s runs were diminishing. He took that call. The same thing was executed with Suryakumar Yadav. His runs waned big time, and by the time the Los Angeles Olympics and the T20 World Cup came in 2028, there was no guarantee that Surya would still be relevant. So, these decisions have been made with ICC events in mind.

Surya has been the beneficiary of this mindset too. He had not been scoring sufficiently for a long time but was persisted with till the 2026 edition as per the 2024 plan.

Give credit where credit is due! It appears, like Gambhir, Agarkar is against the star culture. Perform or perish, that has been his motto so far. What a player did in the past matters little to him.

You listen to Agarkar speak, and you know, here is a guy who knows what he is talking about. Of course, he is a good speaker, and that helps, but more than that, he gives the impression that he is a no-nonsense person and means business at all times.

He has been clear right from the outset in the cases of Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Shami doesn’t inspire much confidence in the fitness and discipline stakes. Bhuvi has done well in the last two IPL seasons, but then by the time those two big T20I assignments loom large in 2028, there is no guarantee he would still be around bowling well.

Indian selectors often don’t get the credit but some exception can be made for Agarkar. The greatest thing he has done is he has encouraged fairness and ensured players didn’t get bigger than the game itself. It was something that plagued Indian cricket before he was appointed — the reason why India took 11 years to finally win another ICC trophy in 2024.