Alls not well in the Indian camp and we got feelers about it from yesterday but could not confirm. Indian coach Anil Kumble charges Rs 7.5 crores and is asking for a higher pay. Well, this is the reason it seems that Indian captain Virat Kohli is talking about. Virat has lately said that he had apprehensions about Anil Kumble earlier as well. Last week, BCCI invited applications for the post of the Indian coach and one could sense all is not hunky-dory in the Indian dressing room. The timing is wrong one feels, India is in England looking to defend its ICC Champions Trophy title they won back in 2013 and the best thing is that this Indian team looks in shape to achieve their goal, if things go according to plan. Team India have won the two warm-up games comprehensively against New Zealand and Bangladesh leading up to the big tournament where they take on Pakistan in a high-octane clash.
It seems Virat Kohli is falling back on his own words about Anil Kumble. Last year when Anil Kumble joined the Indian team as the coach, Virat Kohli welcomed him with a tweet and said, Heartiest welcome to @anilkumble1074 Sir. Look forward to your tenure with us. Great things in store for Indian Cricket with you.”
Then to come out and say that he feels Anil Kumble is ‘overbearing’ is not asked for. In fact, just some days back there were reports that both bickered over the selection of Kuldeep Yadav, the young chinaman. Apparently, Virat was in favour of the chinaman but Kumble begged to differ. Earlier, Kuldeep had bagged four wickets against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar trophy at Dharamsala. So, would his inclusion have helped India’s chances. Knowing Kohli, he loves to have a lot of pacers in his team and that may have triggered the conflict as Kumble must have thought that Kuldeep could be a gamechanger.
A report by The Indian Express has made things slightly clear. The report says that a message was sent to a BCCI official last week by Indian cricket team’s captain Virat Kohli and read as ‘he is overbearing’. The report added that this message was meant for coach Anil Kumble, with whom the Kohli isn’t completely happy.
One man who isn’t taken aback by this development is the former RCB coach Rey Jennings who faced a similar problem with Kohli few years back. “A hard coach can keep pushing and prodding the players of the team but the relationship between the captain and coach has to be good. The trust has to be there. The coach can have issues with the rest of the players but needs to have a smooth relationship with the captain for things to progress. And, as a captain, he has the right to work with people he is comfortable with and I have no complaints,” Jennings said.
Will team India crumble because of Virat-Kumble saga?
Yes, it seems the team may crumble ahead of the big Pakistan clash because this is the top brass of the team at war, which means the youngsters will be jittery about things. This will surely not augur well for team India, but considering the fact that they are professionals, we can expect them to put their best foot forward, but still.
