At last Sunday’s working committee meeting, the secretary of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) Brijesh Patel praised the BCCI for being practical in nominating Cricket Club of India’s Kapil Malhotra as the Indian cricket team’s manager for five consecutive series — the four-Test series at home against South Africa, home Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka, tour to Australia, the Asia Cup in Bangladesh and also the ICC World Twenty20 in India.
Malhotra was first appointed as BCCI observer for India’s ODI series in England in 2014 and also manager of the team for the short ODI series against the West Indies.
Even the two captains Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli, the team and the ICC match officials appeared to be quite pleased with BCCI’s new policy, but a terse communication from the BCCI secretary Ajay Shirke a few days ago that Andhra Cricket Association’s Koka Ramesh has been appointed administrative for the short tour of Zimbabwe refreshed people’s memory that good things do not last long in Indian cricket.
It looks as though that the immediate past BCCI president, Shashank Manohar, was not inclined to change the Board’s representative in the team for every series. In fact he did not make a change once elected as president at a SGM here on October 4, 2015.
Malhotra replaced Goa’s Vinod Phadke, who was docked 40 per cent of his match honorarium for making inappropriate comments during the limited over series (three Twenty20 and five ODI match series) against South Africa last year.
A senior functionary of the BCCI felt that a long-term professional team manager with knowledge of cricket and administration could be appointed, but that such person should not be a BCCI member nominee. Cricket Australia chose Steve Bernard as manager for 13 years and Cricket South Africa did not look beyond Ghulam Raja for many years.
The BCCI has not given any reason for changing neither the team manager nor the fielding coach R. Sridhar.
