Ravi Shastri’s position as head coach to come under scanner?: reports

Mumbai: Team India head coach, Ravi Shastri has been appointed till the 2021 World T20. But, apparently his position as team coach could come under the scanner and he will need to be re-appointed if the BCCI ethics officer DK Jain finds that the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) headed by Kapil Dev is found guilty of conflict of interest, state reports.

On Saturday, the ethics officer sent notices to the three members of the committee and asked them to reply by 10th October. Long-term MPCA member, Sanjeev Gupta, alleged that the trio is conflicted as per the Lodha Panel’s proposal of one man, one post.

If the trio is found guilty then Shastri would unnecessarily have to face the embarrassment of undergoing the process of appointment again, a board functionary said to IANS.

The functionary further stated, “The appointment of Shastri as the head coach will obviously have to be done once again if the committee members who appointed him are found to have a conflict of interest. A new committee will then have to be formed and the whole process has to be re-opened and re-done keeping the newly registered BCCI constitution in mind as the constitution now clearly says that only a CAC can appoint the head coach of the Indian team.”

The functionary further said that the same could also hold true for W.V. Raman women’s team coach as his appointment was also sent to Jain for the latter’s opinion after the Committee of Administrators (CoA) was divided on the trio of Dev, Gaekwad and Rangaswamy forming an ad-hoc committee to pick him as the coach.

“One needs to see what Jain’s verdict is in the Raman matter because in that case also, the same trio as ad-hoc CAC had appointed him as coach even as the two-member CoA was divided. Back then, it was a 1:1 verdict with Vinod Rai agreeing to the trio appointing the coach and Diana Edulji making it clear that there was no place for an ad-hoc CAC in the BCCI constitution that was reworked as per the proposals of the Lodha Panel,” the functionary said.

On the other hand, Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief, Vinod Rai, told Sportstar that Ravi Shastri’s appointment as Team India head coach could not come under scanner if the CAC is found conflicted. Another member of the CoA, Ravindra Thodge, told Sportstar that before forming the CAC all the members were asked to submit ‘No Conflict of Interest’ declaration and there was no conflict found by the BCCI.