No Harm In Retaining Shastri If The CAC Thinks That The Team's Happiness Matters
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
Is it time
to bring fresh ideas and fresh coaching methods by replacing the head coach of
the Indian cricket team? Or will it be better to let Ravi Shastri remain in the saddle to ensure continuity before a packed calendar that includes the ICC Test Championship
cycle and the One-Day Championship cycle, apart from the 2021 T20 world cup? This
is the moot question before the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) comprising
Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shanta Rangaswamy, tasked with selecting the
man who will occupy the hot seat for the next two years.
One feels
that after two years of Ravi Shastri, fresh ideas would be welcome but not at
the cost of disturbing the mental state of the team. If Virat Kohli says that
the team backs Shastri, obviously he is not speaking only for himself but the
entire team. Although CAC member Anshuman Gaekwad has said that Virat Kohli's
comments will not influence the committee, there is no doubt that if there is
no tuning between the captain and the coach (remember the unsavoury incidents
when Chappel-Ganguly and then Kumble-Kohli could not hit it off), there will be
infighting in the team and performance will suffer.
The BCCI
obviously has pre-defined standards and it will definitely ask the CAC to
evaluate the team's performance under Shastri against those standards. Since
the CAC has three stalwarts they are not likely to be swayed by sentiments, but
since all of them are ex-players they also know the qualities needed to manage
a dressing room as complex as that of the Indian cricket team. If Shastri is
found to have delivered, there is no harm in retaining him. It is not a secret
that a happy team performs better. So if the team is happy in having Shastri,
and if he meets the BCCI standards, he should be retained.
