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Sehwag’s setting and Shastri’s selection

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It was hard to believe that the Indian cricket suffers because of identity crisis.  We witnessed partial selection of players in the past. Parents of players like Chetan Chauhan and Navjot Singh Sidhu filed cases against the board for partial selection. Kale, a fringe player from Maharashtra claimed that a selector was asking for a big purse to include him in the Indian side. It is not far that even selection of team coach is influenced by board officials and the board game continues to haunt Indian cricket. Virendra Sehwag spits venom and opened his mind saying that he was not having the setting to get the top post as team’s coach and the race was won by Ravi Shastri, an ex-player from Mumbai. This is not surprising as the players from Mumbai got the much needed lift in the past also and players from North were neglected. Sehwag’s allegations might be right or wrong, but it opened up Pandora’s Box and the loop holes in the selection policy.

The Delhi dasher openly said that he missed out on becoming Team India’s head coach for the lack of patronage in the BCCI and will not apply for the position again. This was a direct insult to the Board of Control for Cricket in India otherwise called “Board of Control for Cricketing Controversies in India.”  The ‘setting’ he used was about the missing influence of Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly. The CAC members were somewhat biased in picking the coach after Sehwag’s name was an automatic choice and Shastri did not file his application after being rebuffed by Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble got the nod last time. Sehwag was fooled by the skipper and the coaching job had gone for a toss between him and Shastri and with high patronage the latter had won in the end. Former India cricketer Virender Sehwag took a swipe at Team India Head Coach Ravi Shastri, casually insisting that he was not selected for the job role of the India coach due to no connections with the BCCI. Sehwag was recently asked in a TV show regarding the reason for not being picked ahead of Shastri, to which he replied, “See, I didn’t have any setting.” What he mentioned as setting is the high influence and a God father to promote. Sehwag was left in the lurch after giving the master blaster of all the hope of getting the top post. It was a fixed match when the result was out in open. In the end game Shastri sealed the place as Captain Kohli played his cards close to his chest.

The swashbuckling former opener was in his elements and claimed that he was misled by a section of the BCCI. Ravi Shastri played a clever game of chess with inputs coming from the BCCI officials and Sehwag was challenged for the coveted post. Sehwag lost out on coach’s post due to lack acquaintance in the Board, whereas Shastri tapped all the sources in the Board and entered the fray at the last moment and got a clean chit. With an eyewash CAC received 9 applications only to show that there is a transparency in the selection. Even the selection of bowling coach Zaheer Khan and batting expert Rahul Dravid for overseas tours were over ruled and both Bharat Arun and Bangar were retained and with Sridhar retaining the place as fielding coach. To Shastri’s advantage the tour of Sri Lanka came handy as the Islanders could not put up a resistance and lost out without semblance of fight in the backyard.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)

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