New Delhi, April 6 :Former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai, who was asked by the Supreme Court to take charge of Indian cricket five years ago in the wake of the IPL corruption controversy, has indicated that the then captain Virat Kohli and head coach Anil Kumble had major differences of opinion — and “there was no denying that the situation could have been handled differently”.
In his book, Not Just a Night watchman — My Innings in the BCCI, brought out by Rupa Publications, the former IAS officer says the much-discussed captain-coach rift had hit the administrators like a “ton of bricks”.
The book delves into intrigue in the women’s team, too. It also details the fallout of allegations of sexual harassment levelled against the then BCCI CEO Rahul Johri.
In 2017, Rai was named head of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) that ran Indian cricket for close to three years.
Revisiting the Kohli-Kumble episode, Rai suggests that the coach and captain had a far-from-healthy working relationship.
“In my conversations with the captain and team management, it was conveyed that Kumble was too much of a disciplinarian and hence the team members were not too happy with him. I had spoken to Virat Kohli on the issue and he did mention that the younger members of the team felt intimidated by the way he worked with them,” Rai writes in the book.
Kumble, on the other hand, told the CoA that he had acted in the best interests of the team and his largely successful record as head coach should be given more weightage than the perceived grievances of players, according to Rai.
“We had long conversations with Kumble after he had returned from the UK. He was obviously upset about the manner in which the entire episode had panned out. He felt he had been unfairly treated and a captain or team should not be given so much importance. It was the duty of the coach to bring discipline and professionalism into the team and as a senior, his views should have been respected by the players,” Rai writes.
The book also mentions that the BCCI’s Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) — comprising Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and V V S Laxman — had spoken to Kohli and Kumble during the Champions Trophy in England in June 2017 as the panel brainstormed over the appointment of the next head coach.
CEO Johri and acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary, too, had a chat with the coach and captain, according to the book. “They felt that the differences were fairly severe and maybe it was only the CAC that would be best suited to have a thorough discussion with both of them. Soon, the CAC met in London and interacted with the two separately, in a bid to resolve the issue. After deliberations over three days, they decided to recommend Kumble’s reappointment as the head coach,” Rai writes.
But then, Kumble decided to take matters into his own hands and stepped down on his own — a move that, the ex-CoA chief writes, was “a bolt from the blue”. In his resignation letter, Kumble wrote: “… I was informed by the BCCI that the captain has reservations with my ‘style’ and about my continuing as Head Coach. I was surprised since I had always respected the role boundaries between Captain and Coach.”
With speculation that Kohli was in favour of Ravi Shastri’s return as head coach, the saga was painted as player power gone out of control. In fact, Shastri was not among the applicants when the BCCI advertised for the head coach’s job. But the last date for applications was extended as, in Rai’s words, “some potential and deserving candidates may not have applied while Kumble was still in the fray”.
The coach-captain rift in the women’s team has also been dealt with extensively in the book.
Rai writes that Mithali Raj had complained to the CoA about coach Ramesh Powar. “Mithali had expressed her deep anguish at how she had been treated by the coach. She felt that more than her being benched in the semi-final game, it was the way in which she was being treated by the coach that distressed her,” he writes.
The former CoA chief also gives the other side. “Powar, on the other hand, wrote a long report, the bulk of which was devoted to the difficulty he was facing in handling Mithali. He maintained that it was due to her poor strike rate that the team management had decided to drop her,” Rai writes.
On the sexual harassment allegations against CEO Johri, Rai writes: “When I discussed this with Diana (member CoA and former India captain Diana Edulji), she demanded his immediate termination… However, dismissing a person without even a prima facie case being made out against him and not giving him an opportunity to defend himself, would certainly be tantamount to denial of natural justice. Hence, I held back.”
An independent panel eventually found Johri not guilty of the charges and in 2020, a year after the CoA demitted office, he resigned as BCCI CEO.
