Virat Kohli stated youthful members of staff felt intimidated by Anil Kumble: Vinod Rai ebook

FORMER COMPTROLLER and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai, who was requested by the Supreme Court to take cost of Indian cricket 5 years in the past within the wake of the IPL corruption controversy, has indicated that the then captain Virat Kohli and head coach Anil Kumble had main variations of opinion — and “there was no denying that the situation could have been handled differently”.

In his ebook, Not Just a Nightwatchman — My Innings within the BCCI, introduced out by Rupa Publications, the previous IAS officer says the much-discussed captain-coach rift had hit the directors like a “ton of bricks”.

The ebook delves into intrigue within the girls’s staff, too. It additionally particulars the fallout of allegations of sexual harassment levelled in opposition to the then BCCI CEO Rahul Johri.

In 2017, Rai was named head of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) that ran Indian cricket for shut to 3 years.

Revisiting the Kohli-Kumble episode, Rai means that the coach and captain had a far-from-healthy working relationship.

Anil Kumble had resigned as India head coach in 2017 because of variations with Virat Kohli. (File)

“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 within the ebook.

Kumble, however, informed the CoA that he had acted in the most effective pursuits of the staff and his largely profitable report as head coach must be given extra weightage than the perceived grievances of gamers, in response 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 ebook additionally 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 through the Champions Trophy in England in June 2017 because the panel brainstormed over the appointment of the following head coach.

CEO Johri and performing secretary Amitabh Choudhary, too, had a chat with the coach and captain, in response to the ebook. “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 determined to take issues into his personal palms and stepped down on his personal — a transfer 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 hypothesis that Kohli was in favour of Ravi Shastri’s return as head coach, the saga was painted as participant energy gone uncontrolled. In reality, Shastri was not among the many candidates when the BCCI marketed for the top coach’s job. But the final date for purposes was prolonged as, in Rai’s phrases, “some potential and deserving candidates may not have applied while Kumble was still in the fray”.

The coach-captain rift within the girls’s staff has additionally been handled extensively within the ebook.

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 additionally provides the opposite aspect. “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 harrassment allegations in opposition to 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 unbiased panel finally discovered Johri not responsible of the fees and in 2020, a 12 months after the CoA demitted workplace, he resigned as BCCI CEO.