Ravi Shastri has been reappointed as the principal coach of the Indian
senior cricket team for a two year term once again. His name was flashed in the
newspaper headlines after the BCCI’s cricket advisory committee(CAC) headed by
former all rounder Kapil Dev put its seal of approval in his favour. But the
ex-Indian captain’s reappointment for the key post has surprised many as
according to them his performance as a coach, both on the field and off it, had
not been up to the mark.
Let us begin with his works on the field. How good or bad a coach is
gets reflected on the performance of the team he or she leads. The Indian
cricket team’s achievements under Shastri’s stewardship had remained just
average and certainly not extraordinary.
To
counter this point, some of his fans and admirers may argue that under his
guidance, the Indian team managed to beat as strong a team as Australia on
their home turf for the first time in 71 years. But these Shastri backers
confidently forget one major aspect of the last Indo-Australian series – the
absence of some of their major players including the present day run machine
Steve Smith because of the ban they were serving from international cricket
after their involvement in the match tampering scandal in South Africa the
previous year.
What difference Smith would have made had he played the series against
India could be well assessed from the menacing manner he scored two back to
back centuries in two innings in the first test of the ongoing Ashes series
against England while making his comeback to international cricket after
serving the ban. At the time of writing this article, the second
England-Australia test was on at the Lords and here too Smith missed a ton by a
whisker in the first innings scoring 92 runs.
During the last World Cup too, the Indian team’s performance under
Shastri’s management was not as per expectations. True the men in orange
managed to reach to the last four stages of the prestigious tournament. It had
won as many as nine matches before the semi-finals skyrocketing the World Cup
hopes among the fans and followers. But India was winning the matches not
because the team was playing well but because the opponents were performing
badly. The day an opposition team(read New Zealand which defeated India in the
semi-final) played well, our team had to eat the dust.
Now about Sashtri’s off the field actions. During the last World Cup an
interesting photo was doing the rounds of social media circles in which the
head coach was seen with the Indian team with a bottle of liquor under his
chair. To be fair with the former ace all rounder, the picture could be a fake
one. But at least an inquiry was warranted on the matter as the photo was
tarnishing the image of the Indian team as well as the country as a whole. But
the BCCI conveniently ignored the issue. Nothing seems to have changed in the
Indian board despite the apex court’s intervention.
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