Abu Dhabi: Three of the ‘Fab Four’ of Indian cricket — Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman — will find themselves in a spot of bother when they will have to put their heads together to pick the next coach.
India’s current coach Anil Kumble’s contract is coming to an end after the Champions Trophy and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already invited applications for the role of the team’s head coach, making it clear that Kumble would not get an automatic extension.
The application request coming on the day of the team’s departure to England allowed the news-hungry Indian media to go on an overdrive and they tried to corelate this as a rift between Indian skipper Virat Kohli and Kumble.
What could have been a professional difference of opinion at times has now been termed as an all-out war. Indian cricket, never being devoid of controversies, has raked up a new one which could spread like wildfire and set India’s Champions League aspirations ablaze.
BCCI has, in a statement, justified their move of entertaining fresh applications: “To ensure a fair and completely transparent process, a nominee of the Committee of Administrators [CoA] will oversee the entire process along with the Cricket Advisory Committee... The BCCI’s three-member advisory committee comprising Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman will conduct interviews and seek presentations to select the best possible candidate to guide the team and take Indian cricket forward.”
In the last one year, Kumble has come up triumphs as a coach in every major challenge that has been thrown at him — India has only lost one series in any format under his reign — the two-match T20 series in Florida against West Indies last August.
The record of their former teammate is likely to leave the ‘Big Three’ in a fix so far as finding a suitable ground to remove him is concerned. Would it be his closeness to the Lodha panel that has upset the BCCI? (The board have reportedly expressed their displeasure over Kumble directly approaching the Indian Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief Vinod Rai over player and coaching staff salaries). Or is it Kohli’s displeasure over Kumble’s so-called ‘overbearing’ style of management?
India’s Champions Trophy performance could also influence the decision-making about a change of guard. As of now, the controversy has clearly put India’s campaign in jeopardy and that too when they are set to take on arch-rivals Pakistan in the opener on June 4.
