By Vijay Mohan Raj
The news of Rahul Dravid taking over as chief coach of the Indian team has been welcomed by all concerned. At the outset amongst all the options of International Indian cricketers he is the most suitable for the job.
There are several Indian cricketers having played number of Test matches who have coached and managed the Cricket team at different levels like Anil Kumble, Ravi Shastri , Ajit Wadekar, Chandu Borde and several others.
Modern cricket across the world and the Research and Development that has been a feature of the evolvement of this game globally has necessitated the up gradation and consequently the qualification of those who wish to take up cricket coaching as a profession.
In the same vein in India there was the installation of the National Cricket Academy at Bengaluru which started initially with the visit of a training team from Australia that was led by the veteran Australian wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh. This initiative was the commencement of a formal cricket coaching programme to ensure qualification of coaches and standardising scientific coaching all over the jurisdiction of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
A great beginning but as it always happens at BCCI it got infested with vested interests. The appointments of the Directors, batting, bowling and fielding consultants and the qualification programme got infested with the politics of the state associations. The outcome of this was that a comprehensive programme was initiated to train and qualify coaches across the country by creating and instituting credentials. Those who passed the qualification tests could be initiated in the coaching program of their respective state Associations.
However, as it turned out the qualified coaches ended up being generally unemployed and others who were supposedly cricketers but had no certificate from the National Cricket Academy (NCA) were appointed coaches of various State teams.
I happened to be part of the National Cricket Academy coaching programme and qualified as a Level C coach. After which I toured several centres to conduct Level A certification program on behalf of NCA as a faculty. There were several First Class and club cricketers who attended these programme with the specific aim to become coaches in their State Associations. At least at that time they thought that it was necessary to qualify by passing the examination that was conducted at the end of the course.
However, the above exercise turned out to be a farce as the State Associations and the BCCI made a turn around and tweaked the credentials required to suit their favored Cricketers to get employment even without coaching credentials.
The idea was floated to encourage all cricketers to take up coaching in a scientific manner as a crucial development of the game in the Country. However the shallow vision of our cricket administrators brought the investment of crores of rupees in this department to a naught.
As on date there is still the infrastructure of training Coaches existing at the NCA in Bangaluru but the products of this organization who are the coaches remain unemployed and therefore unutilized.
As I mentioned earlier the appointment of Rahul Dravid is a welcome development it would have been prudent that he became the Indian coach through the system designed by the BCCI and not in spite of it.
(Vijay Mohan Raj, Former Mumbai and Hyderabad Ranji player. Level C NCA qualified coach)
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