MUMBAI: It was a rather farcical day at the
Mumbai Cricket Association
(MCA). For close to nine hours on Wednesday, the Cricket Improvement Committee (CIC), comprising of some distinguished former cricketers, wracked their brains to pick the next Mumbai coach for both the senior and under-19 teams, only for the decision to be deferred to Thursday afternoon.
At the moment, former India off-spinner
Ramesh Powar looks the frontrunner to bag the senior team job, though one can't entirely rule out ex-wicketkeeper Vinayak Samant.
Clearly unhappy with the choice available, the CIC approached Pravin Amre to coach the Mumbai team again, despite the former India batsman not having even applied for the post, but due to conflict of interest issues, the latter was ruled out. "Amre refused to quit the
Delhi Daredevils
, where he's the assistant coach, and he's not ready to discontinue individual coaching. The two-man Committee of Administrators (CoA) was firm that since this was a case of conflict of interest, Amre couldn't be considered," a source told TOI.
Since they were 'outstation candidates,'
Ajay Ratra and Pradeep Gandhe weren't amongst those shortlisted for the interview on Wednesday. The CIC thus interviewed three potential candidates - Powar, Vinayak Samant and Pradeep Sundaram.
There were eight candidates interviewed for the Mumbai Under-19 coaching job - former all-rounder Wilkin Mota, ex-batsman Kiran Powar, ex-pacer Sandeep Dahad, Rahul Thakur, Milind Tamhane, Dinesh Lad and Vinod Raghavan, who had applied for the senior coach position.
"After a thorough discussion with all the coaches, the CIC members decided that they will need more time to come to a conclusion. So, they will continue the meeting at 3pm tomorrow," MCA joint-secretary Unmesh Khanvilkar told reporters.
Asked whether the reports of CIC considering his name were true, Khanwilkar said, "No, there was a thought, but sir (Amre) has not applied." "The CIC members felt that they needed more time, since it's an important post. So, three-people they have short-listed. They CIC wants to restructure the academy at BKC," he added.
"The CIC feels that there should be coaches at the academy all the time, so that when a coach is out with a certain team, another coach can take care of the boys in his absence," he said. Apparently, the CIC is also of the opinion that instead of appointing bowling and fielding coaches with a team, the MCA should appoint an assistant coach with every age group side.
The new-look CIC includes former India pacers Balwinder Singh Sandhu,
Karsan Ghavri (who was in England during the meeting),
Raju Kulkarni, batting stalwart Amol Muzumdar, ex-off-spinner Kiran Mokashi and ex-opener Sahil Kukreja.
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