THE SLOG OVERS
IN A CLOAK-AND-DAGGER GAME, THIS ROUND HAS GONE TO NEW HEAD COACH RAVI SHASTRI AND CAPTAIN VIRAT KOHLI. NOW THE PRESSURE IS ON THEM TO DELIVER ON THE CRICKET PITCH
With his choice, Ravi Shastri, installed as head coach, captain Kohli’s performance must now do the talking
ONJULY 11, RAVI
SHASTRI became the new head coach of the Indian cricket team. While many were quick to attribute his good fortune to the new powerhouse of Indian cricket, Virat Kohli, what went largely unnoticed is the support Shastri’s candidacy got from fellow Mumbaikar Sachin Tendulkar.
To begin with, after Anil Kumble’s resignation, the job of choosing a new head coach fell to the three-member Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC)—consisting of Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and V.V.S. Laxman. The decision came down to choosing between Shastri and Virender Sehwag. It is no secret that Ganguly was dead set against Shastri as head coach. The last time Shastri was interviewed for this post, in June 2016, Ganguly didn’t even attend the interview. This time, Tendulkar saw merit in letting Kohli have his way. This was possibly because of the conditions surrounding Tendulkar’s own failed captaincy—perhaps the master blaster didn’t want Kohli to have to deal with the same difficulties he had faced. As a BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) source put it: “Ganguly batted for Sehwag, but Tendulkar did not want another conflict between captain and coach.”
The story of Tendulkar’s rapid elevation—and subsequent debacle—begins in the autumn of 1996. The inevitability of handing over the reins of Indian cricket to him had become stark. Tendulkar, then 23 and the best batsman in the world by some distance, was already India’s second youngest Test captain. The hope was that he who could make a billion dreams come true with his
bat would probably conjure up magic with his captaincy too—even though rumours about matchfixing in Indian cricket were also doing the rounds around the same time.
Tendulkar was the BCCI’s golden boy, but there were a few holdouts among the stakeholders in Indian cricket— the selectors. One of the ‘five wise men’ later revealed that two among them had been worried that Tendulkar would become the supreme authority in Indian cricket. “Woh ek Imran Khan ban jayega (He will become an Imran Khan)” was the gist of their opposition. (Khan was notorious for regularly ignoring or overruling the advice of Pakistan’s team selectors, using his personal stature as a form of official authority.) “We knew that if we got rolled over by [Tendulkar] in selection meetings, his aura would diminish our roles. The selection committee would have become redundant,” says one of the selectors. In order to ‘show Tendulkar his place’, the selection committee ignored his wish list for the team he was to captain.
For whatever reason, Tendulkar’s captaincy did not produce the magic so many had hoped for. A couple of stormy selection meetings left him practically in tears. There would be no Imran Khan in Indian cricket. Tendulkar quit and Mohammad Azharuddin returned as captain. He was succeeded by the aggressive and instinctive Sourav Ganguly, thinking heads Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble and then M.S. ‘Captain Cool’ Dhoni as captain. They had their moments, and mostly got what they wanted. Then came Virat Kohli, who has been rewriting every cricketing norm in the country.
Cut to the evening of July 10. That was when the Indian media was informed by Ganguly that they would have to wait for the announcement of India’s new cricket coach.
“You see,” Ganguly reasoned, “[we should] let Virat come back to India from his US vacation. We need to sit with him and explain to him the role and scope of the coach.” This perhaps hinted at an upcoming rap on the knuckles for the Indian captain—but before any of that could happen, the phone lines were ringing, from New York to London and Singapore.
Late that night, Kohli, sensing that Shastri’s chances of becoming coach were slipping, called Tendulkar in London, pressing for Shastri to be given the job (and, immediately). Kohli also spoke with the chief of the committee of administrators (CoA), Vinod Rai, who was in Singapore at the time. This, and also the manner in which Kohli fell out with Kumble, has made many in cricket circles wonder if the selectors’ fears from 1996 are coming true now—does Indian cricket finally have an Imran Khan of its own?
INSIDERS SAY THAT KOHLI
was displeased with Shastri being passed over in favour of Kumble last year, but with the BCCI’s senior management also wanting Shastri out, he had little control over the situation. However, the team kept winning, and with Kohli’s truly spectacular performance in 2016, his stature within the cricket establishment has never been greater. A member of the Indian team told india today that it was during Australia’s tour earlier this year that the captain and coach started questioning each other—publicly and vocally. During the IPL, Kohli reportedly complained about Kumble to BCCI officials and a few former teammates, saying the coach was prone to panicking if things didn’t go according to plan. He apparently even issued an ultimatum: Kumble would have to go or he would resign as captain.
Kohli can afford to issue such threats because he heads a team with no challengers to his supremacy. When Sunil Gavaskar led the team, he had teammates like Gundappa Vishwanath and Bishen Singh Bedi in the 1970s and Kapil Dev and Dilip Vengsarkar in the 1980s. When Mohammad Azharuddin led India, there were many stars in the team, including Tendulkar. When Sourav Ganguly ruled the roost following the matchfixing scandal in 2000, he had Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Laxman to contend with. Even Dhoni had superstar contemporaries: Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh to name a few. The current Indian team features only three superstars—Kohli, Dhoni and Yuvraj. Dhoni and Yuvraj are well past their prime. Not a single player from the playing eleven, barring Kohli, can claim a permanent place in all formats of the game. On top of that, the captain has been in supreme form, winning several matches single-handedly, many in crisis situations—a feat not associated with most Indian skippers.
A BCCI insider says that while it’s too early to speculate, too much power in the hands of one or two people—Kohli and Shastri—has its perils. “Today, he doesn’t want Mr X as coach. Tomorrow, he may not like Mr Y as selector. Then what?” he asks. “There have been powerful captains like Ganguly and Dhoni, but [Kohli] has to be very careful from here on. He
will be under tremendous scrutiny.” Kohli is known to be comfortable with Shastri and is a great fan of his methods—more man management than coaching. And once Shastri was given the job, the duo took on the board yet again.
Ganguly and the CAC had recommended Dravid as batting consultant for overseas tours and Zaheer Khan as bowling coach. But Shastri brushed aside the recommendations and had his own choice for bowling coach—Bharat Arun— confirmed. By doing so, the captain and the coach may have taken a huge risk. Having already stepped on several toes, they had better do well in upcoming matches or there’ll likely be a backlash. And considering that India will play most of its cricket overseas over the next two years—stern Tests await in South Africa, England, Australia and New Zealand, not to mention the 2019 ODI World Cup in England—they will need a lot of luck.
What has made life easier for Shastri and Kohli is also the confusion within the BCCI. The organisation’s hierarchy is in a state of flux, and has been since its administration was taken over by the Supreme Court-appointed CoA. The adhocism was manifest in CoA chief Rai’s admission to the media that the committee was originally not even aware that Kumble’s contract was valid for just one year. And when the CAC appointed support staff for Shastri, they were told that their authority did not stretch that far. The CAC then shot off an angry letter to Rai, which read in part: ‘There have been suggestions that the CAC has exceeded its ambit in going with (Zaheer) Khan and (Rahul) Dravid and these two legends of Indian cricket have been foisted on the head coach. Also we did inform you (Rai) over the phone along with Rahul Johri and Amitabh Choudhary of all that transpired immediately after the meeting was over.’ A week later, in an interview, Rai said that the incident taught him that he should not have taken anyone’s statements at face value.
But what makes Shastri tick? Former India captain Kapil Dev says: “Shastri wasn’t blessed with the best of talent, but [is] someone who [knows] how to use his resources. For someone who started as No. 11 batsman to score a double hundred as an opener in Australia and hundreds against the pace attacks of the West Indies and Pakistan... his confidence [is] his best ally.” Another teammate, Madan Lal, says Shastri’s in-your-face nature is what draws him and Kohli together. “Once, in the 1980s, when we had lost a game, the then-captain was afraid to speak up against some senior players. Shastri singled them out for harsh words on their commitment. They had no option but to pick up their game from the next match onwards.”
Then there are some who feel that while Shastri was a good player in the 1980s and early 1990s, his stature really only grew after retirement, while he was doing commentary alongside Sunil Gavaskar. It was in this role that Shastri was always on the right side of the BCCI, being on every important panel or committee related to Indian cricket. Shastri and the BCCI actually needed each other, they say—his ability to switch sides made him valuable, flipping from being a vocal Lalit Modi fan to criticising him or siding rather openly with N. Srinivasan in the IPL matchfixing scandal of 2013. But, sources say, he doesn’t want to be always seen as a ‘yes man’ to powerful individuals or establishments, the way he remained vice-captain for most of his cricketing years.
A day after the appointment, Shastri was asked what worked in his favour. Pat came the cocky reply: “I am Ravi Shastri.” In his latest avatar as head coach, he has promised a new and aggressive approach. In his presentation to the BCCI, he made it clear that while he would always be a player’s coach, they would not be allowed to take him for granted. There will be no compromise on discipline either—a concern many have voiced, considering the flamboyant lifestyle Kohli has and Shastri’s own habits during his playing days.
The new post will be a challenge both for him and Kohli. Shastri’s first stint didn’t really see the Indian team winning much, with the defeats in the 2015 World Cup semis and the 2016 World T-20 semis hurting the most. But in Kohli, Shastri has a solidly in-form captain for all three formats. Now, though their friendship is already the talk of cricketing circles, it’s their vision and delivery that need to click. The BCCI has stood by them, but what can be given can also be taken away. Tendulkar, Ganguly, Kumble and Dhoni would probably tell them so.