Decision to strip me of captaincy was unexpected, says Unmukt Chand

Dehradun

: India’s Under-19 Cricket World Cup-winning captain Unmukt Chand has said that the decision to remove him from the captaincy of Uttarakhand state team was unexpected while adding that he was not given any prior information by Cricket Association of Uttarakhand (CAU) regarding the move.

The 27-year-old right hand batsman played the last domestic cricket season for Uttarakhand but he was removed from captaincy of the team in the middle of the Ranji Trophy tournament after the state team suffered crushing defeats in its first three matches under his leadership. Later Chand, who was struggling with the bat like the majority of his team mates, was ousted from the team for the rest of the season.

“This captaincy episode happened out of the blue and I don’t know who took the call but I wasn’t given any prior information about it. So, that was definitely a shocker. There was no communication neither from the board nor the selectors. At that time, the team was going through a tough phase and it needed support. However, I believe that one needs to move on,” said the Delhi-born cricketer.

When asked about his experience of leading a relatively new state cricket team, Chand said, "The experience was good and we had a good List-A tournament. Ours is a very young team and it is quite difficult to beat teams which are part of the domestic circuit for a long time.The results were not what we expected but we surely gained many positives from the tournament."