"Does a cricketer never need to rest?" demanded an irate Brijesh Patel, chairman of the national cricket selection committee. "What happens when he's resting, when he's captain? Who will captain the side? Obviously, the vice-captain, right?"

In an exclusive interview to rediff.com in Chennai, Patel defended the decision to replace Shiv Sundar Das as captain of the India 'A' team with Hemang Badani for the one-dayers.

"There are 11 games in this series against England," continued Patel. "Three of them are one-day matches. Das cannot play all of them, right? He too needs to rest sometime."

Asked why Badani was named captain for the one-dayers on the eve of the team's departure for England, Patel explained that Das certainly was the original choice of captain, but Badani would replace him only for the one-dayers while he rested.

When reminded about the fact that Badani was a failure on the India 'A' tour of the West Indies, Patel shot back: "But he got 100 in the first game of this series against England, didn't he?"

But then, so did Das. Besides, Badani was even dropped from the senior team after the one-day series against England?

"So, what should we have done now? Just drop him forever, and forget about him?" demanded Patel.

Dismissing the rapidly snowballing controversy about this sudden decision of the selectors, Patel requested the media not to create controversies where none existed, by highlighting decisions taken in the normal course by the selectors.