Coach from 20 applicants: Board

The BCCI won’t look beyond the 20 applications it has received in selecting a coach for Team India. BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah reiterated today the Board’s desire to appoint a coach before the Australia series and not go in for another makeshift cricket manager.

“We are not going to look beyond the list because we don’t want to give undue importance to anyone,” Shah said, emphasising that the Board had learnt its lessons well from the Graham Ford incident, where the coach committee comprising of Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, S Venkataraghavan, Niranjan Shah, joint secretary M P Pandove and treasurer N Srinivasan invited the South African for the post out of the way, and were turned down.

Among those who have applied to succeed Chappell are former stumper and Maharashtra coach Chandrakant Pandit, former head of the Queensland Academy of Excellence Richard Done, Leicestershire coach Tim Boon, former Australia and South Africa international Kepler Wessels, Queensland coach Terry Oliver, Canterbury coach Dave Nosworthy and former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe.