MCA set to sack winning coach

MUMBAI: If you have coached a team to three titles in four years, what would you expect? Generous accolades? Deserved increment? In the case of Vilas Godbole, coach of the Mumbai Under-25 team, it could very well be the pink slip.
The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) is all set to remove Godbole , who guided the Mumbai University , U-22 and the U-25 teams to the title in the past three years.Apparently , the MCA feels the 70-yearold is 'too old' for the job.
A few MCA officials say that he himself wants to discontinue coaching , but Godbole refuted this claim. "If they say that I'm unfit to coach, I feel sorry for them. I am fitter than most coaches in Mumbai. I have not missed a single practice session in the last four years through illness," a livid Godbole told TOI.
The man likely to replace Godbole is Deepak Patil, who was in the news for the wrong reasons last year after a couple of ex-Test cricketers quit MCA's Cricket Improvement Committee (CIC) citing his uncouth ways. Patil, an inspector with the Mumbai Police, is a part of the technical committee, which proposes the names of coaches and selectors, and is also a managing committee member of the MCA too, which approves the appointments.
Former India seamer Balwinder Singh Sandhu, who was Patil's colleague in the now defunct CIC, too sounded upset. "He has behavioral problems.You need a coach with first class experience to coach the U-25 team, because you are preparing cricketers for Ranji Trophy. Godbole too wasn't a first class player, but he played with the best first class cricketers of his time and learned from them. I don't even know what sort of a player Patil was," fumes Sandhu.
Patil, though, defends his case. "I am a qualified level 'B' coach having managed an 'A' grade. And it is the MCA which has offered me the post. Last year too I was offered this job, but I declined because I felt Godbole is doing a fine job," he says.
On being temperamental, he says: "I have been a manager of the U-25 team for the past three years, so why did any such allegations not crop up there? I have been coaching at the MCA's summer camp. At the CIC meet, I only argued that the coaches who work hard during summer camps, to be given a chance. I may have blocked a few people's vested interests in the process. And I have never misbehaved with any top cricketer. I can't help it if my tone sounds a bit different."