Madness in the method

If the BCCI throws Dav Whatmore an offer he's more than eager to snap up the chance © Getty Images

More than six weeks after Greg Chappell announced his decision not to seek an extension to his contract as India coach, the search by the Board of Control for Cricket in India for his successor finally seems to have ended at the doors of Dav Whatmore. Whether that is indeed the case or not is a different matter but what the BCCI will find it hard to defend is the process it has followed - rather, the lack of it.

For the record, the BCCI's officials have denied media reports that Whatmore, currently coaching Bangladesh, had already been zeroed in as the man for the job. Ratnakar Shetty, the chief administrative officer, was sharp in his reaction to the reports: "There is an official meeting on June 4th; as far as we are concerned the coach will be selected then. If the media wants to write whatever it wants before that the BCCI can't keep denying or confirming everything."

Niranjan Shah, the secretary, was equally adamant in his denial but far more revealing in the progress made so far. Asked if it was a fait accompli that Whatmore would get the job, he said: "A committee has been appointed to select the next coach. The committee has not even met yet."

What neither could explain, though, was why the board had gone about the process of selecting the next coach as it had. First, the board did not advertise for the post. This meant that there was little chance for it to even ascertain who was interested in the job. Secondly, a number of suitable candidates available six weeks ago have since ruled themselves out, one way or the other. Tom Moody has gone to Western Australia, John Wright has accepted a post at the Australian Cricket Academy - and it's a fact that the BCCI did not even approach him to check if he was interested in taking up the job he did for five years.

The board insists that its committee will meet on June 4 and then decide on the next course of action. With India leaving for the one-dayers in Ireland soon after, it's hard to see how they will have time to draw up a short-list, call candidates for interviews and then select one.

In the first place, speaking to members of the board, the impression one gets is that they themselves don't know what sort of coach they want. The focus seems to be on personalities, rather than on the profile of the ideal coach. Some of the most successful coaches in the modern era - Whatmore, Wright, Moody, to name a few - have graduated from coaching county teams in England. If the board wanted to go in that direction and find someone from there, it would have needed to do some serious research, canvas opinion, form an impression. That clearly has not been done. Whatmore himself has emerged as the lone candidate for the job not because the board specifically sought him out, but because he announced his interest, loud and clear, more than once, to the media and to the board.

Even the appointments made so far - those of Venkatesh Prasad as bowling coach and Robin Singh as fielding coach - followed requests from Rahul Dravid, the captain. If whispers are true these men will get longer terms, and moves are afoot to bring Gundappa Viswanath in as batting coach.

Dav Whatmore has spent more than a decade coaching in the subcontinent. How much energy does he have left? © Getty Images

While Whatmore, who sees himself as something of a subcontinent specialist, might well be a good choice for the job, some questions remain. Although Whatmore's ambition to take up the most challenging job in international coaching is admirable, it's also a fact that he has been coaching in the subcontinent for almost 13 years now. John Buchanan only had enough gas in the tank for eight years, despite being in charge of a highly successful team in a set-up designed to provide a coach with as much support as possible. Duncan Fletcher could only put in seven years with England.

If you give the board the benefit of doubt, and assume they have indeed not yet decided on Whatmore for the job, you have to ask what exactly they're waiting for before getting the job done. If they have made up their minds on Whatmore, then it begs the question, why must everyone endure a farce of a meeting in Bangalore?