Shastri wants India to aim for a positive start in Australia
Shastri believes India must target a fast start to the series in Perth to keep their World Test Championship hopes alive.
Former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Committee of Administrators (CoA) chairman Vinod Rai recently revealed why former captain Rahul Dravid refused to coach the senior Indian men’s team after the end of Anil Kumble’s tenure.
Notably, in 2017, Kumble resigned as the head coach of the Indian men’s national team post his relationship with skipper Virat Kohli became ‘untenable’. Dravid was then approached by the CoA but he did not the job citing personal reasons.
“Rahul was very upfront with us,” Rai told Sportskeeda during a Facebook live session. “He said ‘look I have two boys growing up at home and I have been travelling with the Indian team all over the world and I am not able to give time and attention to them, I think I must stay at home also. And give time to my family’.
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“I think that was a very fair request and though he would have been uppermost in mind. So, he was very much in the zone of consideration,” he added.
Rai also stated that Dravid wanted to continue as the coach of the U-19 side as he wanted to complete the work the team which he had started. Consequently, Ravi Shastri was made the head coach.
“Look, in terms of potential for coaching, Dravid, Shastri and Kumble are the best in the business,” Rai said.
“We definitely spoke to Rahul. He was engaged with the Under-19 team and he was involved with them. He had developed a road map on how to develop a team.
“He was bringing out fantastic results. He wanted to continue because he felt that there were some unfinished task with that team and he wanted to do it.”
Dravid was later appointed as the head of cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in July, 2019 and Rai said: “He was very kind and very gracious in accepting that and committing himself to the NCA.”
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