After the ICC T20 World Cup, the Indian men’s cricket team is expected to have an interim coach for the next home series against New Zealand, and former India captain Rahul Dravid has emerged as the favourite to fill the job.
After the T20 World Cup, Ravi Shastri’s stint as Team India’s top coach will come to an end, and the Indian cricket board has chosen to allow itself extra time to find a replacement. The BCCI, according to sources, wants to hire an experienced former India player as the main coach, despite the fact that several foreigners, including some Australians, have expressed interest. It had hoped for Anil Kumble to take up the job after he was forced to resign due to disputes with skipper Virat Kohli, but the great cricketer had recused himself. He is presently the head coach of the Punjab Kings in the Indian Premier League.
According to reports, the BCCI wanted Dravid, who is the coach of India’s youth teams and also runs the National Cricket Academy, to assume the post full-time, but he rejected since he does not want to travel too much.
According to a report in The Indian Express, the board has approached numerous persons and has realised that its coach selection process would take longer than it had anticipated.
The BCCI is said to have avoided posting an advertising to prevent an uncomfortable situation in which it receives a large number of applications but none from someone it thinks acceptable. This simply implies that it may receive applications from some high-profile international coaches but not from similarly-rated Indians, and so will be unable to provide an adequate rationale for selecting a relatively lightweight Indian coach while disregarding the big-name foreigners.
The BCCI wants Dravid to be the temporary coach for the New Zealand series until it finds a suitable candidate. Dravid had just accompanied a second-string Indian squad on a tour of Sri Lanka, while the national senior team was in England.
