BCCI Retains Ravi Shastri as the Head Coach for Indian Cricket Team

The BCCI has announced the new head coach of Indian senior men’s team on Friday (August 16) evening in Mumbai and it is none other than Ravi Shastri.?The Kapil Dev-led Cricket Advisory Committee have conducted interviews with short-listed candidates at the headquarters of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and they decided to retain Shastri for his third stint, which will continue for two years.

Shastri has been in the West Indies with the team and gave the interview via Skype. Apart from him,?former New Zealand coach Mike Hesson, former Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Tom Moody, former India fielding coach Robin Singh and Lalchand Rajput were interviewed by the CAC.

Ravi Shastri was the frontrunner for this post as India captain Virat Kohli had even said that they will be happy if Ravi Shastri continued as the head coach.?As he has reappointed as the head coach, this will be his third term with the team. Earlier he was the Team Director between 2014 and 2016 before joined as the head coach in 2017.

“With Ravi bhai, all of us have a great camaraderie. Everyone in the team shares mutual respect and we have done well together as a group. We will be very happy if he is continuing as the coach,” Virat Kohli had earlier said.

Under Shastri’s guidance, India reached the semifinals of the World Cup in 2015 and WT20 in 2016. Along with this, India won their maiden Test series win in Australia last year, and also reached the semifinals in the World Cup in England last month.

However, a top BCCI official said that CAC was impressed with former New Zealand coach Hesson’s presentation but Ravi Shastri had the last laugh because of his track record.

“Both Hesson and Moody came up with good presentations. They had a clear road map for the future,” one of the officials said.

However, it will be interesting to see if there will be any changes to the support staff or not. Meanwhile, the responsibility has been handed over to the MSK Prasad-led senior selection committee to appointing the new assistant coaches.