CAC And The Cackle!

While the CAC insists that they took Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli into confidence and that all STAKEHOLDERS were on board before the new set-up was formalised, it is difficult to believe that such harmonious and spontaneous consensus either exists, or is likely to last.

- Anand Vasu

Indian cricket is fast becoming breeding ground for irony, off the field, even as it is brimming with talent to take the game forward on it. The Committee of Administrators tasked the Cricket Advisory Committee with selecting an appropriate candidate to replace Anil Kumble as head coach of the Indian team, and what did they do? They came up with a Committee of Coaches to help the team become the best in the world.

Even a clock that has stopped working shows the correct time twice in a day, and the situation in Indian cricket is nowakin to that. A completely broken system off the field through a process in which it is unclear who is calling the shots, has picked some excellent men to work behind the scenes in the Indian coaching set up.

WHILE KUMBLE, it can be argued, did absolutely nothing wrong in his time at the helm of affairs, Virat Kohli clearly had issues in working with Kumble, but wouldn’t say publicly what these were.

Ravi Shastri became the best man to take up the head coach’s job, once the Karnataka leg spinner had been forced out of contention.

Shastri enjoys the one luxury that was denied Kumble, in that the captain wants him in the dressing-room. Add to this the fact that Shastri is perhaps the one person capable of putting the murky and messy events of the recent past completely behind him and push on regardless, and few will complain about him being given the job, even if the manner in which it happened was less than desirable.

But, while the CAC, and Sourav Ganguly seems to have become some sort of a self-appointed chairman or spokesperson for the committee also involving Sachin Tendulkar and V.V.S. Laxman, was asked to pick the head coach, it went ahead and also bestowed the team with the services of Rahul Dravid and Zaheer Khan.