Agarkar named Mumbai captain

Ajit Agarkar, the former India fast bowler, has been officially appointed Mumbai captain for the first time in his 16-year-long career. Agarkar has been stand-in captain before but has now been named captain of Mumbai for the whole of the league phase of the Vijay Hazare Trophy.

The announcement marks a complete turnaround in relations between Agarkar and the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA). In November 2011, Agarkar had left the team in Cuttack as he was disappointed to not be picked in the XI for a Ranji Trophy match against Orissa. He consequently withdrew from the squad for the entire Ranji season but reconciled his differences with the board in a meeting with Milind Rege, Mumbai's chairman of selectors, Ratnakar Shetty, the MCA vice-president, and Nitin Dalal, the MCA secretary, in February 2012.

Agarkar was then named in the probables for the Vijay Hazare Trophy and has now been named captain, replacing Wasim Jaffer, who stepped down as captain in February after holding the post for four seasons. Agarkar, 34, has got the job ahead of the younger Ajinkya Rahane, who has been named vice-captain, and Abhishek Nayar. Both Rahane and Nayar had been spoken about as possible future captains of Mumbai.

Squad: Ajit Agarkar (capt), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-capt), Wasim Jaffer, Ramesh Powar, Suryakumar Yadav, Dhawal Kulkarni, Abhishek Nayar, Iqbal Abdullah, Sushant Marathe (wk), Ankit Chavan, Kshemal Waingankar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu (jr), Siddharth Chitnis, Shoaib Shaikh, Anup Revandkar