Thanks to the presence of some of his old teammates in contention, Gautam Gambhir has decided to recuse himself from the support staff recruitment interviews for the senior men’s team, to be conducted by the high powered DDCA Cricket Committee.

The DDCA committee comprises of Virender Sehwag, Rahul Sanghvi and Aakash Chopra and Gambhir was a special invitee.

However, with the likes of Mithun Manhas and Rajat Bhatia present in the list of candidates, who have played with Gambhir for Delhi in FC cricket, Gambhir decided to keep himself away from the process.

“Gautam will not be a part of any Ranji Trophy recruitment meetings as it might lead to Conflict of Interest. However, he is expected to play an active part in drawing blueprint for Delhi cricket. He will very much be a part of the recruitment process of U-19, U-16. He wants to have a close look at how DDCA is looking after its grassroots programme,” a senior DDCA official told PTI on Friday.

Mithun Manhas is an interesting candidate, shortlisted for the senior coach’s position. He has in fact played under both Sehwag and Chopra and at times even captained them in the state and zonal side. He has also been part of King XI Punjab support staff as batting coach.

Rajat Bhatia has applied for the trainer’s position, having a certification course in it.

Manoj Prabhakar has also applied along with outstation candidates like Ajay Ratra (Haryana), Lalchand Rajput and Sulakshan Kulkarni (both from Mumbai). Hari Gidwani and Vinay Lamba have once again applied for the post of selectors.

(with inputs from indianexpress.com)