Ravi Shastri named new coach of India
The drama surrounding the resignation and subsequent appointment of a coach for the Indian men's cricket team had a rather predictable end as former India captain Ravi Shastri was named for the post in place of Anil Kumble. The former Team director will hold the post for two years, until the ICC 2019 World Cup.
Shastri was carded to be the front-runner once he applied for the post on July 3. His name was approved by the BCCI-appointed Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), consisting of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. Sources had said that Shastri had applied for the post after being convinced to do so by Tendulkar.
The advantage Shastri had over some of the other candidates is his good relationship with captain Kohli.
With Shastri as team director, India reached the semi-finals of 2015 ICC World Cup held in Australia and New Zealand. They reached the last four at the back of seven wins on the trot. India recorded a 3-0 win over Australia in the T20 series Down Under and against South Africa at home, India managed to win the Test series 3-0.
He made his Test debut against New Zealand in 1981 and opened his account in the shorter format of the game against England in the same year.
Shastri scored 3,830 runs in 80 Test matches for India at an average of 35.79. To add to that, he has 151 Test wickets to his name, making him one of the most successful all-rounders to play for India.
He was equally successful in the ODIs, having played 150 matches for India and scored 3108 runs. He also took 129 wickets at an average of 36.04.
Post his retirement, he became a high-profile commentator and is known for his views on the game.
Shastri, 55, as appointed as the temporary coach of the Indian team in the year 2007 after Greg Chappell resigned following the World Cup debacle. In the year 2014, he became the director of the Indian cricket team and held his position till the 2016 T20 World Cup.
The coach-captain drama, which can be traced back all the way to Australia Test series, took an ugly turn in early June when, after India's loss to Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy final, Kumble did not travel to the West Indies with the rest of the team and then tendered his resignation while the squad was mid-air.
He tweeted his resignation, stating that the relationship between him and skipper Virat Kohli was 'untenable'.
The coaching drama, which reportedly had been brewing since the third Test against Australia in Dharamsala in March 2017, when Kumble had replaced the injured Kohli with left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav.
Kohli is understood to be unaware of the decision and that was where the rift began.
While Kohli had stated during the Champions Trophy that there was no rift between him and Kumble, the latter's resignation and the subsequent observations about maintaining the sanctity of the dressing room, made by Kohli in the West Indies, made it clear that there was no love lost between the two.
Source: NDTV
