Ravi Shastri Retained As Team India Head Coach
NEW DELHI :Ravi Shastri has been retained as the Head Coach of the Indian men’s cricket team. The decision was made by the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) comprising of Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shantha Rangaswamy in Mumbai on Friday.
The announcement was made by Kapil Dev at a press conference on Friday evening. Apart from Shastri, Mike Hesson, Robin Singh, Tom Moody, Lalchand Rajput applied for the post. Ravi Shastri’s last tenure ended after World Cup 2019 but he was given an extension for India’s tour of the West Indies.
Shastri has been reappointed for a two-year period, ending with the 2021 T20 World Cup in India. This will be Shastri’s fourth stint with the national team, having served briefly as the Cricket Manager (2007 tour of Bangladesh), Team Director (2014-2016) and head coach (2017-2019).
“Number three was Tom Moody, number two was Mike Hesson. Number one is Ravi Shastri as all of you were expecting… (But) It was a very close race,” said Kapil Dev at the press conference to announce the decision here.
Ravi Shastri was picked as the head coach of Team India for the first time back in 2017 by the then CAC comprising of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. Prior to that, Shastri served as Team Director during World Cup 2015.
During Shastri’s tenure, India went on to become the number one ranked team in the ICC Test rankings and performed exceptionally well in the 2019 World Cup, losing just two games out of the nine matches they played.
Also, India’s first Test series win in Australia too came under Ravi Shastri’s term as head coach of the team.When the BCCI invited applications for the post of head coach after World Cup 2019, Virat Kohli expressed his opinion that he and the team would like to see Ravi Shastri continue at the helm.
In his pre-departure press conference before the West Indies tour, Kohli had said: “The CAC (Cricket Advisory Committee) hasn’t contacted me yet. If they want my opinion, I’ll go and speak to them. With Ravi bhai, we share a great camaraderie, and will definitely be very happy if he continues. But I haven’t been contacted so far.”
Ravi Shastri has played 80 Test matches and scored 3830 runs. Shastri scored 11 centuries in red-ball cricket. He also picked up 151 Test wickets during his playing days. In the One-Day International format, Shastri featured in 150 matches and scored 3108 runs where the left-hander managed to go past the 100-run mark four times. He picked 129 wickets in the limited overs format.
(With PTI inputs)
