Two former Indian cricketers have entered the ongoing verbal war between Sourav Ganguly and Ravi Shastri. The 69-year-old Test veteran Bishen Singh Bedi and former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar took opposing stances yesterday regarding the controversies surrounding the appointment of the head coach of the Indian Cricket team.
Bedi, surprisingly, spoke up in favour of Shastri, saying that CAB President Sourav Ganguly need not have responded to the comments made against him by the Shastri. A bit of maturity, he said, should have been expressed from both the people involved in this controversy.
"Where's the need to rake up all this nonsense?" he demanded. He insisted that Ganguly should have kept his cool and taken up the matter privately with the remaining parties involved.
On June 23, Anil Kumble was named as the head coach of the country's cricket team despite having next to zero coaching experience. A lot of people took it as a deliberate slap in the face of Ravi Shastri who had been the team's manager since the association with Duncan Fletcher ended.
Shastri, for one, proved that he was not someone to take matters lying down and immediately made a public retort against Sourav Ganguly, thereby making the matter personal. Yesterday, Ganguly responded, declaring that the snubbed former manager was definitely living in a “fool's paradise”.
He also justified Ravi Shastri’s disappointment, saying that the man had every right to be peeved at the selection committee following so deliberate a snub.
While Ganguly has insisted that overlooking Shastri for the job was not an act of personal vendetta against the erstwhile manager of the team, Bedi feels otherwise. All this has done, he says, is provide fuel to the media to speculate upon.
Interestingly, while Bedi understands Shastri's disappointment, he seems to undermine Ganguly's right to defend himself when he says, “You can't be reacting to every criticism. This (criticism) is part of your job. People in authority should never be in a position to prove a point. There were three others in that committee. You (Ganguly) don't have to prove any point.”
Sanjay Manjrekar, on the other hand, came out in full support of Sourav Ganguly pretty much echoing what Gautam Gambhir had previously said. Manjrekar is of the opinion that the unexpected rejection has caused Shastri to react this way. “India have made the better choice for the coach,” he stated on Twitter.
People associated with the sport have since spoken out. Yesterday discarded Indian batsman Gautam Gambhir, in an interview to ABP News, said,"Ravi Shastri's comments only shows his desperation. Kumble is the best choice, he is a hard-working person.”
This spat is bound to have some effect on newly-appointed Anil Kumble, a possibility everyone should ideally keep in mind. The sooner this controversy blows over, the better.
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