BCCI includes Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan in NCA's high performance monitoring programme

MUMBAI: Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan have been thrown a 'lifeline' by the BCCI.
Nearly two months after the duo was excluded from the BCCI's central contracts list at the behest of the Ajit Agarkar-led national selection committee as a punishment for missing Ranji Trophy matches last season, the two have been included in the list of 30-odd players for the National Cricket Academy's (NCA) High Performance Monitoring Programme for the 2024-25 domestic cricket season by the same selection panel.
"The BCCI, or the national selection committee has nothing against Iyer and Kishan. If they improve their attitude towards domestic cricket and turn out for their state teams (Mumbai and Jharkhand) in the forthcoming domestic season, there's every chance that their central contracts will be restored and they will be recalled into the Indian team, if they perform well. This is a signal to them that they are on the radar of the selectors," a well-placed source in the BCCI told TOI on Saturday.
Iyer has led the Kolkata Knight Riders to the IPL 2024 playoffs while Kishan's Mumbai Indians were knocked out at the league stage.
Meanwhile, Mumbai allrounder Musheer Khan, who did well in the Under-19 World Cup (360 runs in seven matches@60.00, with two hundreds and one fifty & seven wickets@26.57) too has been included in the list, which basically consists of players who don't have a central contract with the BCCI, but are knocking on the doors of the Indian team, and will certainly be a part of the India 'A' team in the forthcoming season.
The 19-year-old Musheer played a big hand in Mumbai's 42nd triumph in the Ranji Trophy last season, scoring 433 runs in three knockout matches @108.25, with two centuries—203 not out against Baroda in the quarterfinal and 136 in the final against Vidarbha— and a half-century, besides taking five wickets@20.80.
"At some stage (dates aren't finalised) these 30 selected players for NCA's high-performance programme are likely to undergo around a month-long camp at the new state-of-the-art NCA facility near Bengaluru under chairman VVS Laxman. The new NCA will be launched by the BCCI in August. Most of these players have done well in domestic cricket," the source revealed.
Apart from Iyer, Kishan and Musheer, some of the names that emerged for this camp are pacers Mayank Yadav, Umran Malik, Avesh Khan, Kuldeep Sen, Harshit Rana (did well for KKR this season), Khaleel Ahmed (part of travelling reserves for India's T20 World Cup campaign), pacer Tushar Deshpande, who has been doing consistently well for the Chennai Super Kings in the past few IPLs, batsmen Riyan Parag, Ashutosh Sharma, Sai Sudharsan, Devdutt Padikkal, Sai Kishore and Prithvi Shaw and Mumbai's spin allrounders, left-arm spinner Shams Mulani and off-spinner Tanush Kotian (who was the Player of the Tournament last season).
The national selectors have also chosen a set of players for the under-23 camp, which includes those who've played in domestic cricket.
"Now, the junior national selection committee will pick a set of players for the U-23 camp of those players who are yet to feature in domestic cricket," the source informed.