BCCI announce new head coach and bowling coach

After a lot of speculations, the head coach of India has been finally announced. Ravi Shastri would be the head coach as per a statement from CK Khanna, the Acting President of BCCI. Additionally, the former Indian pacer Zaheer Khan has been appointed as the bowling coach.

Rahul Dravid who is the coach of India A and India Under-19 teams will also be a batting consultant for team India for overseas tours. Sanjay Bangar will continue to be the batting coach for all the tours. Earlier, a few reports had emerged of Shastri being appointed as the coach but later BCCI denied of the declaration. But as per the latest report by PTI, he has been handed over the duties.

The interviews of the nominations for the post of the head coach were done on July 10 and the expectations were that the results would be announced on that day itself. But the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) consisting of Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman held back the decision and asked for more time as they wanted to consult the Indian captain Virat Kohli.

There have been several reports about Kohli preferring Shastri for the job over others and it doesn’t come in as a surprise that the former Indian captain has been chosen. Shastri has pipped the nominations of Virender Sehwag, Tom Moody, Lalchand Rajput, Richard Pybus and Phil Simmons to be in charge of the coveted position.

There was another theory flying all around that Ganguly wasn’t over the rifts he had with Shastri last time he applied for the same position. Shastri wasn’t present in person for the interview and gave the same over Skype while vacationing in Thailand which didn’t go down well with the Prince of Kolkata. Anil Kumble was selected over Shastri in the previous interview.

Shastri had a stint with the Indian team earlier when he was the team director for a year. He had a tremendous partnership with Kohli and others. He had applied for the coach’s job last year but Kumble was preferred by the CAC. But after the rifts between Kohli and Kumble, the latter stepped down from the position which allowed Shastri to re-apply.

He will now take over the reigns with India’s tour to Sri Lanka starting from July 26 and will hold on to that position until the 2019 ODI World Cup.