Ravi Shastri was re-appointed head coach of the Indian men’s team by the Kapil Dev-led Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), which unanimously felt that the incumbent’s “communication skills and understanding of team issues” stood out.
Shastri, who had the public backing of captain Virat Kohli even before the short-listing was initiated, has been reappointed for a two-year period, ending with the 2021 T20 World Cup in India. “We have unanimously decided to appoint Ravi Shastri as the head coach of the Indian cricket team as you all were expecting,” Dev said after the completion of the candidates’ interviews that took place through the day.
The three-member CAC also comprised former India coach Anshuman Gaekwad and former women’s team captain Shantha Rangaswamy.
Shastri pipped former New Zealand coach Mike Hesson, Australian Tom Moody and former India teammates Robin Singh and Lalchand Rajput to the post. Former West Indies and Afghanistan coach Phil Simmons pulled out of the race, citing personal reasons. While Robin, Rajput and Hesson gave in-person presentations, Moody spoke to the panel over Skype from Australia.
“After doing all the interviews, Tom Moody was third after our marking and Mike Hesson, an intelligent, young boy from New Zealand was a close second. It was very close,” the former India captain Dev said, implying that Lalchand Rajput and Robin Singh were far behind in the race.
The candidates were primarily marked on five aspects — coaching philosophy, experience, achievements, communication and knowledge of modern tools.
A ‘very good’ had a 20 marks weightage while a ‘good’ carried 15. ‘Average’ was 10 and ‘poor’ was five. “Everyone of us gave marks and honestly we never discussed which one of us gave how many marks. When we calculated, it was a very close race, I can tell you. I am not going to get into the details as to how much was the difference but it was a very small number (margin),” said Dev.
The 1983 World Cup winning captain said that for him, his former teammate Shastri’s “communication skills” were one of the highlights during his presentation. “I felt his (Shastri) communication skills were better and she (pointing at Shantha) might have felt something else. We were given a marksheet and we filled it up without discussing with each other,” he said.
On expected lines
Once Kohli openly backed Shastri’s candidature before the ongoing tour of West Indies, it was expected that the former India captain would be a favourite to retain the position. However, Dev reiterated that the committee never sought the Indian skipper’s opinion. “Certainly not (sought Kohli’s opinion). Agar unko puchte toh puree team ko puchte (If we would have asked Kohli, then we would have taken the opinion of the whole team),” he said.
Dev, however, clarified that the panel is not aware of the terms of appointment and Shastri’s remuneration. He also stated that their terms of reference, while conducting the interviews, was not based on their previous performance but on the “presentations” given and what the coaches felt about the way forward for Indian cricket.
Video call
Dev refused to divulge the details of Shastri’s presentation, which was made over a video call from Antigua and was the last of the day. “That’s confidential. He gave a presentation of what he achieved in the last two years and how the team can improve further. He sought more time from the board to make this team stronger in the days to come. All of them gave presentations on what’s the way forward and we weighed it along with the past performances and that swung it in Shastri’s favour,” Shantha Rangaswamy concluded.
