Rahul Dravid won't tour with the senior team, says Vinod Rai

The Great Indian Coach Drama took a new turn today as Committee of Administrators (CoA) member Vinod Rai, after due consideration, stated that the Rahul Dravid would not be available to tour with the Indian Team, citing his commitments with the India U-19 and India ‘A’ teams. Earlier last week, CoA approved the appointment of Ravi Shastri as the Head Coach keeping the appointments of Zaheer Khan and Rahul Dravid on hold.

The Indian team U-19 team and India ‘A’ team is lined up some important assignments around the corner. The U-19 World Cup is scheduled to be held next year along with some important ‘A’ tours. Given the commitments of Dravid with the two teams, it would be very difficult to chalk out a schedule with Dravid in the senior team for the specific tours.

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“Dravid’s contract issues are all sorted. He has a two-year full-time contract (India A and U19). He has said that he is not available for tours abroad (senior team). He does not want to hang around. Earlier, there was no system in place. We are trying to set templates. Zaheer is very much in the scheme of coaching various Indian teams but we can only have him after we have a contract in place. We can’t just tell Zaheer okay we give you a three month or three-week contract and these are conditions. We have to also look into his IPL contract, media commitments” commented Vinod Rai according to NDTV sports.

The remit of the CAC was to appoint chief coach. The CEO and acting Secretary (Amitabh Chaudhary) were present when the presentations were being made and they zeroed in on Ravi Shastri. However, subsequently, they (CAC) recommended names of two consultants (Zaheer and Dravid) and both CEO and acting Secretary were not privy. That’s the reason there was a lacunae in the first BCCI press release which stated that they have been ‘appointed’,” concluded Rai.