Need to Talk to Virat Kohli Before Announcing Coach : Sourav Ganguly

The Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) on Monday interviewed five candidates — Virender Sehwag, Ravi Shastri, Tom Moody, Richard Pybus and Lalchand Rajput– for the job, which fell vacant after Anil Kumble’s departure. Anil Kumble resigned from the post of head coach after the Champions Trophy final because he and Kohli were having some issues. The BCCI said that they will announce the new coach before the tour of Sri Lanka where India will play Test series against Sri Lanka.

The CAC was supposed to announce the coach on Monday but they postponed the announcement saying that they need to discuss this with Captain Kohli. “We want to speak to Virat Kohli, once he is back from America, all three of us, the respective people concerned, we will explain to him that the coaches want to function in a certain way and make sure everybody is on the same page once we make the announcement. Once, we make the announcement, it has to be till the World Cup,” Ganguly said.

After this statement, the BCCI has received a lot of flak due to the perception that skipper Virat Kohli is becoming too powerful where he will have a final say even regarding the choice of a coach. “Let’s get one thing straight. The final decision maker is the CAC and not Virat Kohli. When Sourav said that he will speak to Virat, he meant that once he is back from a break, he will be told what CAC feels about each candidate that they interviewed and why they are choosing a particular candidate,” a senior BCCI official, told PTI.