Among the major decisions that the BCCI will have to take when the senior functionaries meet later this month is who should be the next coach of the Indian cricket team.
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Since Duncan Fletcher’s contract was terminated after the World Cup, the team has technically been without a coach. Ravi Shastri, who was drafted in as team director during the one-day series against England last season, has been continuing in that position on an ad hoc basis with a coach each for batting (Sanjay Bangar), bowling (B Arun) and fielding (M Sridhar) under him.
The issue was to be resolved last month when the working committee of the BCCI met in Kolkata. But that meeting turned out to be a fiasco when most of the senior members of the board’s current dispensation did not know how to handle former president (current ICC chairman and Tamil Nadu Cricket Association president) N Srinivasan’s insistence on attending.
Several senior members were loath to allow Srinivasan to participate as the final order of the Justice Lodha Committee in the IPL scandal is still pending. These members said they would ask the Supreme Court for directions on the former BCCI chief and the meeting was annulled.
To clarify, appointing the coach was not on the official agenda. It was to be done off-line, based on what the high-powered panel appointed by the BCCI – comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and V V S Laxman – advised on the matter and then ratified.
But even the advisory panel’s meet was scuttled because of Srinivasan’s presence. However, the BCCI needs to move fast in the matter because the South African cricket team arrives in India in the first week of October for a full tour (four Tests, five ODIs, three T20s), and whoever is the incumbent would obviously like to spend some time with the players before the matches begin. And vice versa.
Anurag Thakur, BCCI secretary, told the media during Kumar Sangakkara’s farewell Test in Colombo last month that appointing the coach was a priority concern of the board. Interestingly, he also added some riders to who the choice could be.
“Whether it will be a foreign coach or a homegrown one, is something that has to be deliberated still,’’ said Thakur. “What is also being considered is whether we need one coach or two – for Tests and limited overs cricket – since there are now two captains (Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni) in place.’’
Apart from the fact that India has very rarely had two different captains (I can recall only the brief period when Anil Kumble led in Tests and Dhoni in limited overs cricket in 2007-8), the fact that Kohli and Dhoni are starkly different personalities has perhaps provoked the need for two coaches.
The biggest issue, however, is whether the coach should be a foreigner or homegrown. After having Indian coaches in the 1980s and 90s (Bishen Bedi, Ajit Wadekar, Anshuman Gaekwad and Sandeep Patil), the BCCI swayed dramatically in the opposite direction when they appointed John Wright in the 2000-01 season.
Since then, there have only been overseas coaches, with Indians filling in the breach only occasionally as a stop-gap measure. After Wright came Greg Chappell, followed by Peter Kirsten and finally Duncan Fletcher – all with rich experience, but producing mixed results.
Wright and Kirsten, both low-key and mellow personalities, got the best out of the Indian teams they coached. Under the former, India became a formidable side in both formats and some of India’s finest cricketers bloomed in his period. With Kirsten, India not only won the 2011 World Cup but also reached No. 1 in the Test ranking.
On the other hand, Chappell – with arguably the best credentials among the four – could not quite meet expectations. He fell out badly with captain Ganguly who had personally proposed his name, had good success when Dravid took over, but very soon there was a virtual revolt against him in the dressing room, leading to India’s ignominious early exit from the 2007 World Cup. Chappell quit immediately after.
Fletcher, who took over from Kirsten (on the South African’s strong recommendation) arrived after a hugely successful stint with the England team. But he could not quite match that as India’s coach, despite establishing a strong bond with captain Dhoni.
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India’s overseas performances in Tests particularly were dismal in the four years that he was in charge. Somehow Fletcher, for all his acknowledged expertise, just could not inspire the team to emerge from its defeatism – which was manifested in the whitewashes suffered in England and Australia in 2011-12.
Shastri’s appointment as team director – effectively a supra coach – in 2014 was a reaction to India’s continued failure in Tests overseas. This spilled over into the World Cup and was then subsequently extended to the hard-fought Test series against Sri Lanka, which India won.
Why India spent 15 years being obsessed with having an overseas coach has always been contentious. Former cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar, among many, had argued for giving retired Indian players the opportunity simply because they would be more attuned to the “Indian ethos and way of thinking”.
While a sound argument, the BCCI was compelled to look overseas because the team members themselves preferred a foreigner. The late Raj Singh Dungarpur, who was instrumental in getting Wright, told me that the players themselves did not want a homegrown coach because of fear of the politics that prevailed in Indian cricket.
Whether this sentiment has changed is a moot question. By and large though, the old complaints against Indian coaches being either not qualified enough or vulnerable to tugs and pulls of BCCI politics have diminished dramatically.
Indeed, there are big-ticket former players who have shown an interest in being coach, something they would desist from in the past. The money and the status enjoyed are unmatched anywhere else in the cricket world.
Dravid, for instance, has accepted the coaching assignment of the under-19 and India A teams. Ganguly made it open that he was willing to be the coach of the national side. But he is also joint treasurer of the Bengal Cricket Association which could create a conflict of interest, something that the BCCI, badly stung in the IPL scandal, will not want to risk.
An Indian coach seems the most likely preference now with Shastri the front-runner since he also seems to enjoy the trust of the current team; negotiations between him and the BCCI are in an advanced stage.
But anybody who has followed Indian cricket closely over a period of time knows that there are no guarantess. We’ll have to wait and see whether the coach’s appointment is straightforward or a doosra!
