CAC Witnessed COA’s Hostile Takeover As Shastri & Co’s Contracts Were Put On Hold

Even after the appointment of Indian Head Coach Ravi Shastri and other support staffs in the name of former Indian Pacer Zaheer Khan and batsman Rahul Dravid respectively in the capacities of bowling and batting consultants, the dramatic cloud over the Indian Cricket team hasn’t been shunned off completely. The question mark appeared in this regard directly hinted towards the duty undertaken by Cricket Adversary Committee (CAC) on the above-featured appointments following which their official contracts have been put on hold. Post appointing the major heads of Indian cricket on Thursday, the legal team of BCCI was right on their duty to put the contracts on draft but with the stoppage command from the end of Committee of Administrators (COA), their contract penning deeds were put to rest. Now COA is about to handle the string of furthering with the decision on the contracts to be offered to the coach and support staff.

In accordance with the sources, a senior BCCI Officials expressed the above matter to be taking dig these days as CAC once being questioned for their selection deed, threw a question on Shastri’s intentions. Shastri, in his previous report, acknowledged the CAC’s choice of Dravid and Zaheer as consultants with requisite homage but recently his expression of having a full-time bowling coach along with the already present Sanjay Bangar (batting coach) created the mess in the selection.Hence COA in that regard to avoid the huge disparity in the amount being paid to different assistant coaches decided to keep a tab on that issue.

“The legal team was preparing the draft for the contracts, but the COA asked for the papers and the final call will be taken by the COA. They are also set to meet Shastri and it looks like a final call will be taken after taking him into the loop. Shastri has, in fact, made it clear that while Dravid and Zaheer’s presence from time to time would be invaluable, he needs a full-time bowling coach,” the official said.

Officials further showing the lesser avenues in having the former Indian pacer on board explained its dialectical reasoning as the veteran had already asked for an astronomical figure of Rs 4 crores while the board did go to him last year for serving the Indian team as their bowling coach. Now with such situational outswings, it falls almost into an unlikely stage as COA entirely opposed the offer to pay such amount while on the other end India’s regular batting coach Banger gets much less even though he has been India’s full-time coach.

“This is not the first time that Zak has been approached. He was approached last year as well, but he clearly refused because he wasn’t given the amount he demanded. Also, he wasn’t too keen on coming on board on a full-time basis. Now to think that the COA will also agree to compensate over the Rs 4 crore even though he will only be a consultant is expecting a bit too much it seems,” he said.

Things turned ugly when Shastri showed his unwillingness to let others (CAC) pick his support staff. Following this uproar, the members of the CAC, led by Tendulkar through their strongly worded letter to Vinod Rai and Amitabh Choudhary expressed their urge to know the reasoning behind the same while the decision to appoint Dravid and Zaheer has been made keeping others in a loop.

The letter goes somewhere like these,“We spoke to Mr Shastri about getting Mr Khan and Mr Dravid on board in these capacities, and he readily agreed to the idea of having them in the set-up so that it would benefit the team and Indian cricket as a whole in time to come. It was only after getting Mr Shastri’s consent that we also recommended Mr Khan and Mr Dravid, in their respective capacities.”

BCCI in reciprocal to that played a clever move through naming Zaheer Khan who was earlier named bowling consultant, in the email sent on Thursday evening, was now provided with an overseas tag like Dravid. There has been a conjecture spreading all over that Shastri is all set to get former bowling coach Bharat Arun on board next time when he meets the COA for the discussion.

According to the current contract, Dravid is all set to have 4.5 crores in his first year with the increment of 10 percent in next year. BCCI with their legal team working out on their new contract along with the addition of consultant’s role, the payment is set to be increased.

Hence, the COA needs to crop up with their impulsive way of sorting the mess at the earliest so that they can ensure that the newly appointed head coach and the consultants get their respective contracts as soon as possible.