The Board of Control for Cricket in India has decided to not renew the contracts of 11 National Cricket Academy coaches, several media reports confirmed. Their contracts are set to run out at the end of this month.
The coaches, five out of whom are former India players, were appointed by the Committee of Administrators last year on the recommendation of Rahul Dravid after he took over as Head of Cricket at the NCA.
The coaches were informed about the BCCI’s decision by Dravid in the last few days.
The likes of Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Subroto Banerjee, Shib Sundar Das, Mansoor Ali Khan, Subhadeep Ghosh, T Dilip, Rajiv Dutta, Apurva Desai, Sitanshu Kotak, Ramesh Powar, among others, are the ones whose contracts have not been renewed, The Times of India reported.
However, Narendra Hirwani (spin), Abhay Sharma (wicketkeeping), Under-19 coach Paras Mhambrey, physiotherapist Ashish Kaushik, trainer Anand Date, operations manager Kshemal Waingankar; and education head Sujit Somasundar are set to retain their roles, the report added.
The coaches who were employed on salaries ranging from Rs 30-55 lakh said they were not offered a reason for the non-renewal of their contracts.
“We received a call from Rahul (Dravid) two days ago and he informed us that BCCI has decided not to renew our contract. There was no real reason given to us,” one of the coaches told The Indian Express.
“He said he tried his best to retain us but he couldn’t do anything further. For the past three months, we have been attending webinars and planning activities for after Covid-19. Now suddenly, we are told that our services are no longer needed,” he added.
The coaches also questioned the timing of the decision given that all coaching roles in Indian domestic cricket have now already been filled.
The BCCI hinted at a complete restructuring of the NCA under Dravid’s leadership as a reason for not renewing contracts of coaches, who they claimed were not selected using the procedure that the CoA themselves prescribed.
“It was a case of apples and oranges given the way NCA hired coaching staff without interviews last year. Right now, with the pandemic disrupting everything, these coaches have had nothing to do in the last five-odd months. So, what’s the point renewing these contracts?” a source close to the development told The Times of India.
“The BCCI will look at a complete overhaul of the structure and do things the right way once cricket begins,” the source added.
Financially, there seems to be little reason for the board to cut jobs as it had a cash and bank balance of Rs 5,526 crore, as of March 2018, including Rs 2,992 crore in fixed deposits.