New Delhi: The Kapil Dev-led ad hoc committee has emerged as the frontrunner to pick the next national coach but a final decision on panel formation would be taken only after the next Supreme Court hearing.
The application deadline for all the coaching roles is July 30. The Committee of Administrators (CoA) running Indian cricket had asked the court for directions on the continuation of Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman.
However, if there is no directive from the court on CAC, the CoA might be left with no other alternative but task the Dev-led committee with picking the national coach, a move that could again divide the SC-appointed panel. One thing is certain that no panel would be formed till the next hearing.
The ad-hoc body comprising former India captain Kapil, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shantha Rangaswamy had earlier appointed W V Raman as the Indian women’s team coach in December. Earlier in the day, one of the members confirmed to PTI that the BCCI has approached the ad-hoc committee to pick the men’s head coach as well. Back then, the CoA was a two-member panel — comprising chairman Vinod Rai and former India captain Diana Edulji, who had called the women’s coach selection process unconstitutional. She had asserted that only the Cricket Advisory Committee was empowered to do so.
CoA is now a three-member body with the appointment of Lt General Ravi Thodge in February. But with serious doubts over the future of CAC owing to conflict of interest charges, the CoA may have considered it prudent to hand the responsibility to the ad-hoc panel. While Tendulkar has been cleared of conflict of interest charges, Ganguly and Laxman have been asked to choose one out of their multiple cricketing roles as per the BCCI constitution. The COA, however, is yet to take a call on the matter. Dev and Ranagsawamy too fall in the ambit of conflict of interest as they are also responsible for the formation of the players’ association as per the new BCCI constitution. The BCCI Tuesday invited applications for the men’s team support staff, including head coach who will need to be less than 60 years of age with a minimum international experience of two years. The current support staff comprising incumbent head coach Ravi Shastri, bowling coach Bharat Arun, batting coach Sanjay Bangar and fielding coach R Sridhar were given a 45-day extension following the World Cup, covering the West Indies tour from August 3 to September 3. All of them will get an automatic entry in the recruitment process. On the other hand, the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) decided to invite applications for the coach and support staff of the Indian team on Tuesday and that sudden urge to appoint the coaching staff has taken certain sections of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) by surprise, especially with the date of the Annual General Meeting already announced — October 22. A senior board official said that while the CoA earlier said that there would be a review meeting with the coach and skipper on the team’s performance in the World Cup, they have suddenly decided to go ahead and invite applications for the coaching staff and the urgency factor cannot be ignored.”This is wrong at many levels. Firstly the principle, when the CoA has already announced the date for the elections then why the tearing hurry for these appointments? Are they catering to someone’s desire of having someone specific at a particular position?
“One alternative is that they seem to be in a rush to sweep things under the carpet with respect to the World Cup. A report must be sought from not only the manager but also each of the specific coaches.
It would be necessary to set the rumours around the curious case of Vijay Shankar’s injury and its handling by the management to rest. “The batting coach must have answers for the number 4 question since it is obvious that it was the team management that was asking for certain players to be included.” the official said. (Agencies)
