Circumventing and circumscribing: BCCI's coach selection saga

William Shakespeare might not have objected, perhaps, had the BCCI stolen the title of his widely-appreciated 'Much Ado About Nothing,' put to paper the second part of it, and sold it, of course, without the credits that would have been due.

Any established practice needs to be and must be negated if you are the BCCI, and if at all you do agree to conform to the practice, it necessarily needs to be with a twist.

Take the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) for example. Upon its formation in June 2015, it was intended to advise the BCCI on matters related to cricket.

The committee was supposed to be accountable to the then BCCI secretary, Anurag Thakur, and make recommendations to the then president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, which were then required to be passed on to the board.

Two years hence, Thakur is out of office, Dalmiya, unfortunately, is no more, and the powers that be within the BCCI have, with a twist of their wand -- the same wand they have successfully been using to stall the order of the highest court of the land for a year now -- have escalated the CAC to a throne hitherto unforeseen in its short history.

The judgment pronounced by the Supreme Court on July 18, 2016, a copy of which has been procured by Sportskeeda, specifically states that the power to pick the head coach of the senior men's team lies with the three-member selection committee -- which is also responsible for picking the India squads.

But that's for us, for the readers of this post and the observers of the game. That's certainly not for the BCCI -- the BCCI that has been opposing the Court's order through a series of litigations, review petitions, and in the CoA chief Vinod Rai's words, through 'disruptive elements stalling the Lodha reforms.'

Not only did the board empower the CAC to pick the coach, it also, with utter negligence to the 'process' it so emphatically emphasized upon to justify the abhorrent treatment meted out to the former coach Anil Kumble, thought it fit -- unless the CAC is a bunch of outlaws doing more than what was asked of it -- that the consultants to the coach must also be picked by the committee.

Wait, did they really empower the CAC to do all of that? Was the CAC empowered to do anything at all?

On July 10, immediately after five candidates were interviewed for the job -- Ravi Shastri, Virender Sehwag, Tom Moody, Richard Pybus and Lalchand Rajput -- Sourav Ganguly announced that the decision on who the coach would be would be taken on a later date after consulting the captain, Virat Kohli and after discussions with the "members of the board."

"We want to speak to Virat Kohli once he comes back from America. We want to make sure that everybody is in synchronization. We don't want to see six months down the line, things to go wrong," were Ganguly's words at the presser.

Was the Cricket Advisory Committee appointed to advise the BCCI or was it the other way around?

Never mind that Rajiv Shukla, the chairman of the IPL, had so beratingly stated that 'the captain would have no role to play in the selection of the coach.' Never mind that the CAC wasn't allowed to do what it was doing in the first place. Never mind either that the "members of the board" were to have no say in the selection. Well, even the CAC was not supposed to be in the mix, so never mind, really.

And never mind, of course, that three of the best that India had produced were being made scapegoats only so that the wishes of the captain could be adhered to, and the interests of the BCCI could be protected.

Mind you, that on July 10, Ganguly had stated that the CAC had not narrowed down on a candidate's name for the job and that they had merely interviewed the candidates and analyzed their presentations.

However, within 24 hours, perhaps promulgated by the same wand, and pushed through by Rai, who asked the CAC to announce the name of the coach by the end of the day on July 11, Ravi Shastri was named the head coach.

Trusting Ganguly for his words, this writer believed that within 24 hours, Kohli, who was in America at the time, was consulted -- via telephone, skype, e-mail, or teleport, perhaps -- and Shastri's name was also finalized by the appropriate office bearers of the board.

But wait, there's a subset to this Tamasha. While the CAC members were apparating out of India between July 10 and 11, the BCCI got an owl. It flew through the window and splashed on the floor, unable to control the laughter upon seeing the BCCI officials sipping cups of tea in Mumbai, while all hell broke loose outside.

Upon being roughened -- the board had a wand for the poor bird as well -- it coughed out the half-truth that the BCCI had sent it to tell the BCCI that a coach had been named. That the heir had been named.

There was a moment's silence as the owl and the BCCI looked at each other, nobody wanting to give in just yet, before both the parties, simultaneously, burst into uncontrollable proportions of laughter, each laughing harder than the other, making merry of the frenzied state that they had so shamelessly put everyone in.

The owl was duplicated and was asked to face the media on the evening of July 11 to state that no coach had been named, yet. Finally, by the end of the day, with everyone as drunk on the circus as the owl -- now dead -- was, the board revealed that Shastri, unbelievably, unapologetically, and if I dare say, undeservingly, was indeed the next heir of Slytherin.

We might be forgiven, by the time 2019 is done, for forgetting amidst all the drama that has transpired, that Anil Kumble once was India's coach

So the process was followed and the process was now complete. The BCCI, although only half-heartedly and only half following the norms, had appointed a coach, just like it had the last time.

How could it be, though?

Any established practice needs to be and must be negated if you are the BCCI, and if at all you do agree to conform to the practice, it necessarily needs to be with a twist.

And so it was. The coach came but came with two add-ons. The kind of add-ons that you add to Google Chrome -- just there to make you feel better about the work you do than to help you do it in the first place.

Rahul Dravid and Zaheer Khan, as it has now become clear, were add-ons at Shastri's dispensation and it is Shastri who holds the cursor. There are several questions to be asked here.

How was the CAC allowed to pick consultants in addition to the coach? Given that it was, why weren't applications invited for the said posts like it was done for the head coach? Most importantly of them all, why were they named in the first place, when the incumbent coach had an opinion of having his own 'core team?'

Now that Sanjay Bangar has been transferred from his position of the 'batting coach' to the 'assistant coach' and Bharat Arun named as the 'bowling coach' what exactly would Dravid and Zaheer's positions be?

Shastri seemed to have all the right words but not the precise answers.

"I’ve spoken to both the individuals. As good as three or four days ago. Both were fantastic cricketers of India and their inputs will be invaluable. They will be on board once they have spoken to the authorities concerned. There are no issues on that."

In what capacity will they be on board? What would their contracts be like? Who are these authorities concerned?

"It depends on the individual and how many days they want to give but their inputs will be invaluable and they are most welcome. And both the gentlemen I have already spoken to personally," Shastri said, giving empty rhetorics about the exact details of Dravid and Zaheer's role.

For now, there's Shastri as the head coach, Bangar as his deputy, R Sridhar as the fielding coach, Arun as the bowling coach, Patrick Farhat as the physio and Shankar Basu as the trainer. Add Dravid and Zaheer -- whenever they're added -- and you'll have an eight-member support staff.

Add three more to them, and you'd have an eleven India can play friendlies against while all of us are busy figuring out what exactly is happening inside the dressing room and the courtrooms.

So India has a cricket board that contempts the orders of the highest court of the country, panders to the wishes of the captain by subjugating, contravening, and undermining the opinions of the lawmakers, their own personnel, and the fans of the game (who don't really matter, do they?) and does what it wanted to do anyway.

Circumventing the rules and circumscribing their own norms to justify the rebellion is not a new normal. It has been the norm since the days those now in the administration were out on the field, and even before that.

The CoA looks helpless, the Supreme Court is trying to not be an extra-judicial body, and the board, despite being shot several times in the foot -- by the ICC too -- isn't ready to budge.

The book is out now, and so are the zombies -- shot several times over, by several authorities over the years -- who are just not ready to die.