Virender Sehwag Applies for Team India Head Coach’s Job

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has received responses from six candidates to its advertisement inviting applications for the job of head coach. While Kumble is an automatic entry into the process, the others in the race are Australian Tom Moody, Englishman Richard Pybus, Lalchand Rajput, Doda Ganesh and quite shockingly Virender Sehwag.

Sehwag held the position of the Team Director with the Kings XI Punjab in the recently concluded Indian Premier League and has played 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 Twenty20 Internationals. The record of Anil Kumble, who took over in July last year, has been brilliant – he led the team to five successive series wins, four at home and one in the West Indies. The real test for Kumble will be in the Champions Trophy which will be the first major tournament outside India under him. “We have contacted Sehwag during the IPL and asked him to consider applying for the job of India coach. But he won’t be the only one applying because we expect other former players to also throw their hats in the ring. The board wants to go through the process of selection of coach again. Also, the next contract is likely to run until the 2019 World Cup, so even the length of the contract has to be taken into consideration before appointing the coach. We don’t want a scenario where the players and the coach are not on the same page,” a top BCCI official said to The Indian Express.

If BCCI is willing to hire a coach until the 2019 World Cup, they will try everything to get the right coach so that he can build a good team before the World Cup. Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman, The BCCI’s Cricket Advisory Committee, will choose the next India coach.