A day after Gautam Gambhir was officially announced as India men’s cricket head coach, Abhishek Nayar – Gambhir’s colleague as part of the Kolkata Knight Riders’ support staff in the Indian Premier League – is tipped to join Team India as the assistant coach.
Nayar is understood to be among a list of names that have been suggested by Gambhir for various positions in the team’s support staff. According to a BCCI official, the Board has already reached out to Nayar and the preliminary discussions have been positive.
Nayar, a prolific all-rounder in domestic cricket for Mumbai, had little impact in either department in his three ODIs. However, he has emerged as one of the most successful and sought-after personal coach-cum-mentors to an array of cricketers. Besides his comfort of working with Gambhir in IPL 2024, Nayar being a close friend of India captain Rohit Sharma could also work in his favour.
For the bowling coach, feelers have been sent to R. Vinay Kumar and L. Balaji. There is a school of thought in the BCCI hierarchy that to ensure continuity in the thought-process, at least one of the current coaching staff members should be retained. It will be interesting to see if Gambhir is asked to work with either Vikram Rathour (batting) or Paras Mhambrey (bowling) or T. Dileep (fielding).
Selection dilemma
With time running out for the selection meeting for the limited overs’ tour to Sri Lanka – starting July 27 – the BCCI is yet to announce the new selector. It has been three weeks since the Cricket Advisory Committee interviewed candidates for the selector’s post.
Interestingly, the BCCI has still not made the outgoing selector’s name public. While it is widely believed that Salil Ankola, the former speedster, will make way for an incoming selector from the north zone, chief selector Ajit Agarkar has served out his 12-month tenure at the end of the T20 World Cup.
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