Members of Parliament on Thursday expressed disappointment over India's humiliating loss to South Africa in the second One-Day International in Durban, with some of them demanding coach Greg Chappell's dismissal and an explanation from Board of Control for Cricket in India chief Sharad Pawar.
Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra said Pawar must take some hard decisions to ensure India's sequence of defeats is broken.
"People feel hurt after they watch the performance of the Indian cricket team. Since Pawar is BCCI chief, he should tell us what are the steps he is taking to save the team from continuous defeats," he said.
"What he thinks about the coach has to be decided by him," he added.
Holding Chappell responsible for the defeats, RPI MP Ramdas Athawale demanded the removal of the coach and non-performing players.
"This is a disappointing performance as India could score only 91 runs. This means Greg Chappell is not fulfilling his responsibilities. This defeat has brought disrepute to India.
"We also have demanded that at the district level scheduled caste and scheduled tribe players should be given reservation and the players performing better should be nominated for selection in Indian team," he said.
Asked whether Chappell should be removed, Athawale said: "He should be removed, but we have to induct good players replacing the bad ones."
However, Rajya Sabha MP and Convenor of the BCCI Media and Communications Committee Rajiv Shukla was hopeful that the team would come out with some fresh strategies and make amends for their past failures. "Yesterday's performance was disappointing. I am also hurt, but I am sure the team management will make strategies for the next match so that we may not face such a shameful defeat," he said.
Shukla denied that India's loss to South Africa was due to experimentation in the batting order.
"This is not because of experimentation; there was only one experiment as Mohammed Kaif was sent first down. Our batting line-up (simply) collapsed," he added.
