Rahul Dravid has been invited to participate in the selection of India’s Under-19 team here on Friday for its tour of England. India will play a warm-up game, two Tests and five one-dayers in a series of contests beginning July 19. The team will leave for England on July 15.
The 10-month contract as India Under-10 and ‘A’ team coach for Dravid - part of the famous ‘fabulous four’ alongside Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and V. V. S. Laxman - ended on March 31. Thereafter, he was mentor and coach of Indian Premier League (IPL) team Delhi Daredevils.
Dravid seemed to have been recently dragged into the ‘conflict of interest’ issue in Ramachandra Guha’s letter, a severe indictment of Indian cricket. The erstwhile Committee of Administrators member explained the reasons for his exit from the committee in the letter. In it was also a likely reference to Dravid. “The BCCI has accorded preferential treatment to some national coaches by giving them ten month contracts for national duty, thus allowing them to work as IPL coaches/mentors for the remaining two months. This was done in an adhoc and arbitrary manner; the more famous the former player-turned-coach, the more likely was the BCCI to allow him to draft his own contract that left loopholes that he exploited to dodge the conflict of interest issue.”
Subsequently, BCCI officials have confided and gone on record saying that Dravid did not come under the scope of conflict of interest because it was the BCCI that offered him a 10-month contract and that it could not match the professional fee Dravid would have received from the IPL franchise. But the CoA believes that an India coach has to be given a 12-month or two-year contract.
The BCCI will soon advertise for the post of coach for the India U-19 and ‘A’ teams and ask the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) to select the coach before the team departs for England. However, the Justice Lodha Committee has recommended that the coach and support staff of the junior teams have to be selected by the junior national selection committee.
Should Dravid respond to the advertisement and the CAC choose him for two years, the BCCI may have to shell out at least around Rs. 6 crore per year. The BCCI appears to be extremely happy with the work Dravid has done with the junior teams in the last two years. The final call, though, will have to taken by Dravid himself, who was employed by Daredevils after Rajasthan Royals was suspended for two years.
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