Why India batting coach Sanjay Bangar has every reason to feel shortchanged

Despite 145 international tons on his watch, Sanjay Bangar has been shown the door in the name of ‘freshness’, while other coaches were retained.

Sanjay Bangar | Twitter: ANI Digital

Jaipur: In India, only the batting coach can do all wrong and, as Sanjay Bapusaheb Bangar has experienced, alone gets held accountable.

Clearly, the principle of collective responsibility, which must apply to members of the coaching staff too, is not followed. Success or failure is collective and should not be exclusively placed at the door of one coach. It is as much a team effort off the field as it is on it.

In Pakistan, on the other hand, accountability has seen the exit of the entire coaching staff: Head coach Mickey Arthur, batting coach Grant Flower and bowling coach Azhar Mahmood. Even trainer Grant Luden. Nothing selective there.

India have been much more successful than Pakistan, then what was the pressing need to change one component of a largely successful machine?

Bangar would be wondering where he went wrong. On the face of it, the former India opener has had to pay for the failure of Virat Kohli & Co. to chase down 240 in the weather-hit World Cup semi-final against New Zealand.

Surely, if head coach Ravi Shastri, bowling coach Bharat Arun and fielding coach R. Sridhar are competent enough to be offered a fresh two-year contract, then why pick on Bangar, who has been exemplary on commitment from August 2014, when he came on board?

Track record

According to statistician Mohandas Menon, India’s batsmen have scored 67 hundreds in Tests (including Ajinkya Rahane’s 102 in Antigua), 72 in ODIs and 6 in T20Is in the Bangar era.

The batting coach did not score any of them, but would have played some role in the accumulation of 145 international hundreds, an average of 29 each year.

If Bangar is not getting any credit, then all the blame must not come his way either.

“Bangar has reason to feel shortchanged. If someone had to be held accountable, the first man to go should have been Shastri, who helms the coaching staff,” a person in an important position in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said Monday.

Why Rathour was picked over Bangar

M.S.K. Prasad, who heads the senior selection committee, was far from convincing on why only Bangar had to go.

It’s a separate issue, but how the selectors are qualified to decide on not only the coaching staff (except the head coach), but the administrative manager as well, defies logic. It’s absurd, really.

“Frankly speaking, if you see the last five years, there is definitely some improvement. But, looking to the Test Championship and two T20 World Cups, we thought there must be some freshness in that department. That’s the reason why we went ahead with Vikram Rathour as the first choice,” Prasad explained.

“Freshness”, only in the department handled by the batting coach, who is also the assistant coach? Many would find that argument strange.

While making the announcement, Prasad went to the extent of declaring: “Let anybody say anything,” adding the interviews had been conducted in the “most honest and fair manner”.

Bangar got the No.2 position in the shortlist prepared by Prasad and his colleagues, ahead of England’s Mark Ramprakash.

Conflict of interest

Twice in the past, conflict of interest issues have come up against Rathour, an Overseas Citizen of India, who has served as a national selector and played a handful of Tests and ODIs in the latter part of the 1990s.

Well, is Rathour no longer conflicted? He has to give an undertaking to the BCCI.

The perception in the BCCI has consistently been that Rathour has the “blessings” of Anurag Thakur, an influential former president, who is now a Union minister.

Vinod Rai, chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators, and BCCI CEO Rahul Johri would have at least noticed Rathour-related news kept being leaked to certain publications.

In other words, the ground had been prepared for not renewing Bangar’s contract.

Prasad informed the media that he had “a discussion” with two Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) members, chairman Kapil Dev and Anshuman Gaekwad, “prior” to interviewing 14 candidates for the batting coach’s position.

Actually, Prasad was not fully accurate. He did speak to Kapil, but his conversation with Gaekwad had been at the latter’s initiative and before the CAC did the head coach’s interviews.

“I called Prasad as he has been going on tours and I wanted feedback. It is incorrect to suggest he interacted with me before the rest of the coaching/support staff got decided by the selectors,” Gaekwad maintained.

Dev told ThePrint: “Prasad did call me after our decision that Shastri be retained. My advice was that he and his colleagues take the views of as many people as possible before deciding on the appointments of the rest of the coaching staff.”

It is learnt that Dev, on behalf of the CAC, asked Shastri if he was specifically looking for certain individuals getting contracts as members of the coaching staff. Shastri did not take any names.

Significantly, Shastri “did not” seek a change in the batting coach during his interview with the CAC. It is, however, possible that a request was conveyed by him to other quarters.

So, were ‘factors’ at play in Rathour being named the first choice? Prasad should go beyond the unconvincing “there must be some freshness”.

Many, in any case, feel it’s time for freshness in the selection committee. Time, too, for heavyweights to do the picking and choosing.

What happened in Pakistan

Cut to what happened in Pakistan, a team which failed to make the World Cup semifinals only on the Net Run Rate, losing out to eventual runners-up New Zealand.

The Pakistan Cricket Board’s Cricket Committee, which includes six former cricketers — Wasim Akram, Misbah-ul-Haq and Urooj Mumtaz, directors Haroon Rashid, Mudassar Nazar and Zakir Khan — unanimously recommended that the full coaching staff go.

They upheld the principle that when the coaching staff operates as a team, accountability should not be selective. That it must be fair.

Misbah, a giant of a batsman and highly-respected during his years as captain, is expected to be the new head coach.

Perhaps, some may raise the issue of conflict of interest as Misbah is one of those who did not want Arthur’s contract renewed.

Administrative manager’s selection

Meanwhile, there is speculation in Mumbai, where the BCCI is headquartered, on whether an individual in the organisation in a way influenced the selection of Girish Dongre as the next administrative manager of Kohli and Co.

The whisper is that some applicants could have been eased out at the screening stage.

Despite being interviewed, incumbent Sunil Subramaniam’s fate was sealed after his much-publicised row with diplomats at India’s High Commission in Trinidad and Tobago.

Subramaniam is on extension till the end of the tour of the West Indies and may have something to talk about once back home. So far, the aam aadmi is largely familiar with only one side of the story.