Dravid set to take over as Indian team's coach

The Indian media have more or less anointed Rahul Dravid as the next coach of the national cricket team.

The 48-year-old will most likely take charge after the T20 World Cup ends in the United Arab Emirates and Oman next month.

Current coach Ravi Shastri will leave the role then. Along with him, Virat Kohli, India's current captain across all formats, will leave the T20I role.

In a style which is so typical of the Indian board (BCCI), it advertised for the post of head coach on Sunday when the entire world already knows who is going to be picked.

Most great names in world cricket have already congratulated Dravid on his new innings.

The right-handed batsman was a prolific scorer during most of his playing career and is considered astute and dependable.

The BCCI wants a coach of Dravid's stature for helping navigate the leadership transition which is likely to take place in the next couple of years starting immediately after the T20 World Cup.

The split captaincy process which may see Kohli leading the Test side and Rohit Sharma the limited-overs teams will need someone like Dravid to have a calming influence in the dressing room.

It should not confuse a young player if the power equation keeps changing from one format to the other.

Like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has come on board as mentor for the T20 World Cup, Dravid enjoys an enormous amount of goodwill among cricketers, administrators and fans.

The BCCI knows that they can be completely free of any controversies with such a coach at the helm.

Shastri had recently got into a book launch controversy in England and had passed a few hyperbolic comments in the media.

Dravid can save the team and the BCCI from a lot of unwanted distractions.

What works in favour of Dravid is his ground work over many years as Under-19 and India A coach and then the head of the National Cricket Academy.

The former India captain is often regarded as a "process person" and his methods have worked wonders for Indian cricket.

From Hardik Pandya to Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Aggarwal to Shreyas Iyer, Mohammad Siraj to Washington Sundar, almost every young player who is likely to serve India for the next five years or more has spoken profusely about the contribution of Dravid.

In contrast, not even half the number of players have publicly spoken about the positive changes Shastri has brought.

The appointment of former great players as coaches by Cricket South Africa (Mark Boucher) or Pakistan Cricket Board (Misbah-ul-Haq) hasn't had the desired effect for them.

However, with Dravid, this is unlikely to happen since he has cut his teeth in different capacities as coach with a fair amount of success.

Never in the history of the game has a player with over 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs been coach of a national team. The Dravid model could be just the trend-setter by the BCCI.

Indo-Asian News Service

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