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Anil Kumble was not BCCI's first choice for India coach

Bengaluru, June 24: The Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) president Anurag Thakur has revealed that Anil Kumble was not the first choice for Indian team's head coach's position.

Yesterday (June 23), BCCI appointed Kumble as the coach for a period of 1 year. Kumble pipped Ravi Shastri to the top post.

File photo: Kumble (left) and Dravid

However, Thakur has said BCCI had approached another Indian legend for the job but he wanted to work with the junior team. Former India captain and batting great Rahul Dravid was BCCI's first choice.

"I requested Rahul Dravid to coach the Indian team. He didn't say no, but said that he will work for the junior team," Thakur told "NDTV" on Thursday (June 23) after Kumble's appointment.

"That is the good thing about Dravid. He didn't go for the senior team post, big money and all. He wanted to work for the junior cricketers and not the senior team," he added.

Dravid was India A and Under-19 team's coach. He took the Under-19 team to the World Cup final in Bangladesh earlier this year. "The Wall" was appointed in June 2015.

The 43-year-old Dravid was Delhi Daredevils' mentor during this year's Indian Premier League (IPL). Many former cricketers wanted Dravid to coach India.

When Dravid himself was asked about coaching the senior team, he had said this in April, ""Any decision that I make at this stage of my life would depend on whether I have the bandwidth to do all of these things. It takes time. You can never really say that now you are ready and now you are not. That's an experience, a learning. You have to do it to only know. Everyday you do it and you want to learn."

"It's not important whether results come or not but can you give that level of commitment and level of time for doing anything like that (coaching India). Just like in cricket, I mean if I wanted to be really good batsman, I recognised that time, sacrifices and devotion whatever required to get it done and what sacrifices I had to make for it. Coaching to him is a process where one learns something new everyday.

"I am quite young in this kind of space. There were a lot of things I didn't think as a player. As a captain, I had to think about strategy and things like that but not to the depth of what you need to do as a coach. Your mind and energy are diverted to other things, so you think a lot about things that I didn't think as a player. You make mistakes and then I realise how I could have things differently," Dravid added.

OneIndia News

Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 7:33 [IST]
Other articles published on Aug 3, 2017