India's next coach: continued

Graham Ford has declined the job in a civil, low-key, discreet way: all the qualities that made him such an attractive prospect as coach. There's no reason to doubt his stated reason for staying with Kent: the well-being of his family. But rumour has it that Ford was appalled by the Indian Board officials and the state of cricket training in India—which isn't hard to believe. And not being given a free hand in selecting his support staff was, apparently, another turn-off.

So we have a preparatory camp about to begin and no coach. Sunil Gavaskar appeared on television on Monday, 11 June, and observed that after Ford's withdrawal, the BCCI was "back to square one." Actually, it's worse than square one. At square one Dav Whatmore was a real possibility: now, thanks to the search committee's whims, he's ruled out as a likely candidate. This leaves the Board with a free choice between that hot coaching property, John Emburey, and the usual Indian suspects.

Unless we go to England with what we have in place. In his television appearance, Gavaskar said that he didn't know whether the BCCI would reconvene a meeting of the search committee or carry on with an 'interim' arrangement in place. Would that be Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Singh and Gundappa Viswanath as our bowling, fielding and batting coaches respectively? Perhaps we didn''t give the selection committee enough credit. Perhaps it knew what it wanted all along.

Prasad, Viswanath and Robin Singh were fine players and it's perfectly possible that they'll be successful coaches. I just wish the Indian Board would find a coherent (i.e. non-shambolic) way of arriving at decisions. Watching Niranjan Shah (Secretary) and N. Srinivasan (Treasurer) over the past week, making predictions, eating their words and bumbling bravely on, has been like living in one of those two-reel comedies from slapstick's golden age. More and more the BCCI comes across as a rich repertory company with a particular talent for farce.