Ravi Shastri to meet CoA on Monday to discuss the selection of support staff

Newly appointed Indian head coach, Ravi Shastri is set to meet the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) regarding the selection of his support staff. The meeting is assumed to take place on Monday, as soon as he returns from London. The selection of the core support staff is to be decided upon in the meeting.

The 55-year-old former Indian player was appointed as the head coach of the Indian cricket team by the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC). Since then, there has been a tussle over the appointment of the bowling coach, with Shastri reportedly rooting for Bharat Arun while the CAC appointed Zaheer Khan as a bowling coach. This standoff is sure to be a point of deliberation and discussion in the meeting, which might be attended by the acting president of the board CK Khanna, secretary Amitabh Choudhary, CEO Rahul Johri and CoA chief Vinod Rai.

Shastri reportedly unhappy with the appointment of Zaheer Khan

With Sanjay Bangar and R Sridhar already working with the team as its full-time batting and fielding coach respectively, Rahul Dravid and Zaheer were appointed by the CAC as batting and bowling consultants respectively. However, Shastri is reportedly unhappy with the appointment of Zak as the bowling coach as he’s intent on bringing his trusted man Arun into the job.

Further, the BCCI made it clear in a statement that the former Indian pacer’s association with the team will be on a tour-to-tour basis. He is set to spend about 5 months with the Indian team. Zaheer reportedly did not wish to commit more than 100 days but on the CAC’s insistence, it is now a done deal for 150 days.

CAC hurt by criticism of their selections

Reportedly, the CoA is of the opinion that the CAC, comprising Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman went overboard regarding the recruitment procedure. Hurt by this criticism and reports, the CAC has written a letter to the CoA chairman Vinod Rai and clarified the appointments were made after informing the new coach Shastri.

In the letter, CAC wrote,”We spoke to Mr Shastri about getting Mr Khan and Mr Dravid on board in these capacities, and he readily agreed to the idea of having them in the set-up so that it could benefit the team and Indian cricket as a whole in time to come.”