The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Sunday stuck to the contentious seven-point guidelines given to its selectors, vehemently opposed by chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar leading to a stand-off between him and the BCCI recently, and took no decision to compensate him for abiding by them.

“The office-bearers had laid down the guidelines. The Board felt that if there are any issues the office-bearers should deal with them. No decision was taken on compensating anyone. As of now the guidelines stand,” said BCCI treasurer N Srinivasan after its Working Committee meeting here.

The guidelines, which prevented the selectors from writing any columns or interacting with the media, had impacted Vengsarkar the most as he had to stop writing his newspaper columns following the BCCI’s gag order.

The former India captain threatened to quit the post, but relented when BCCI chief Sharad Pawar said the board would look at giving him compensation. The duo had a meeting here on Saturday which went off very well, according to Vengsarkar.

The Working Committee also decided to change the Ranji Trophy format from next season to enable Plate Division toppers too to fight for the trophy by including the top two in the knockout quarterfinal phase with six Super League teams and doubled the infrastructure subsidy to associations from Rs 25 to Rs 50 crore.

Kirsten appointment

It also ratified the appointment of Gary Kirsten as the national team’s coach and Dav Whatmore as the Director of Operations of the National Cricket Academy, besides appointing former India batsman W V Raman as the under 19 team’s coach on its forthcoming tour to South Africa.

Srinivasan said the decision to change the format of the Ranji Trophy from next year followed a suggestion from the Technical Committee headed by Sunil Gavaskar.

“This was done as per a suggestion from the Technical Committee. Some of the Plate group teams felt they were not playing for the Ranji Trophy,” the BCCI official said.

The Working Committee also approved the three-Test tour to India by South Africa from mid-March 2008 and the England ‘A’ team’s participation in this year’s Duleep Trophy as the sixth outfit.

“W V Raman and Rakesh Yadav were appointed as the under-19 team’s coach and manager for the tour of South Africa commencing on December 28,” he said.

The committee also replaced the name of Delhi’s Abhinav Bali with that of Bengal’s Manoj Tiwari as the recipient of the BCCI’s annual awards as the best under 22 cricketer in the 2006-07 season.

The BCCI had announced Bali as the winner of the MA Chidambaram Trophy and the cash prize of Rs 50,000 on Saturday before it was found out that the player was ineligible as he had joined the rebel Indian Cricket League which is not recognised by the board.