The new coaches

After some uncertainty and confusion, Ravi Shastri has been appointed the head coach of the Indian cricket team. Shastri’s appointment was a foregone conclusion because of the good vibes he shares with captain Virat Kohli; the icing on the cake is the appointment of Zaheer Khan as the bowling consultant and Rahul Dravid as the batting consultant for overseas Test series. In his playing days, Shastri was a very intelligent cricketer, considered by many as the best captain India never had. As a coach, his main quality is the optimism and confidence he brings in — as the master of hortatory speeches, he has no equal.

The selection of Zaheer as the bowling coach and Dravid as the batting consultant on tours are inspired choices. The three men who made this decision — Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman — have all played a lot of cricket with both Zaheer and Dravid. Zaheer was a very fine pace bowler who lost his way in the initial part of his career before becoming a very skilful bowler. Even as a player, he was a fine mentor to the fast bowlers in the Indian team. Dravid, the most technically adept Indian batsman since Sunil Gavaskar, has shown a great appetite for coaching, finding success with India’s junior and A teams. As India play a lot of Test cricket away from home in the next couple of years, Dravid can play a very important role in mentoring the batsmen.

A word about the selection of the coaches — the process was muddled and confused. Anil Kumble, the previous head coach, was simply chucked out despite a fine record with the team. Ganguly did not wish to name the replacement coach/coaches “in a hurry”, making a mockery of the process and deadlines. It was left to the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators to direct BCCI to end the confusion. Hopefully, all associated with the process have learnt their lessons, which they would bear in mind when the time comes to repeat this exercise.