Venkatesh Prasad joins fray for Team India coach

MUMBAI: Former India seamer and current junior national chief selector, Venkatesh Prasad, is the latest to apply for the India coaching job, TOI has learnt.

Prasad and former India team director Ravi Shastri are thus the two new applicants for the post, which became vacant after leg spin great Anil Kumble quit earlier this month in acrimonious circumstances.

Prasad, who played 33 Tests and 162 ODIs in the 90s, is set to finish his three-year term as the junior India chief selector in September this year. The 47-year-old refused to confirm the development, but it's reliably learnt that he is willing to compete with the likes of Virender Sehwag, Tom Moody, Lalchand Rajput and Dodda Ganesh.

Was CoA upset with Sehwag approach?
It has also emerged that the Supreme Court Appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) was upset when it was told to them that the team is unhappy with Kumble and thus a general manager of the Board had approached Sehwag to apply for the job. "They came to know about the problem only after the IPL final in Hyderabad last month, by which time it was too late to do anything except ask the CAC to pitch in.

"It is, however, mysterious that CoA head Vinod Rai didn't attend the meeting after the Champions Trophy final between Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble, which turned out to be unpleasant in the end. If the CoA was more proactive, Kumble wouldn't have been insulted by the captain in front of three top Board officials. He felt let down after the episode."

Apparently, the CoA is upset that the BCCI CEO didn't let them know before extending the deadline to apply for the India coach to July 9 too. "If it was done to suit Shastri, it won't go down well with Viru, who, we must remember, was asked to apply in the first place. Neither will he be pleased about Sachin Tendulkar's reported request to Shastri to apply for the job," said an official.


Niranjan Shah in committee set up for reforms
Veteran Saurashtra administrator Niranjan Shah has been added to what was earlier a seven-member committee constituted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) at its Special General Meeting (SGM) on Monday to see "how quickly the Lodha reforms can be implemented."

The 74-year-old Shah, it must be mentioned, has already quit the Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) as he fails the Lodha criteria on multiple counts. Interestingly, the panel is headed by Rajeev Shukla, and includes former India skipper Sourav Ganguly, and TC Mathews, who are now all ineligible to continue in their state associations because of the Lodha reforms clauses.

The CoA, meanwhile, is likely to make a note of all this developments when it gives what is likely to be a scathing status report on the BCCI's stand on reforms in the SC on July 14. The BCCI committee, which is supposed to submit its report in a fortnight, will meet on Saturday in New Delhi for the first time.