Not Rahul Dravid! Sourav Ganguly reveals another batting legend wanted India head coach job
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BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has revealed another Indian batting legend was keen on taking over as the head coach of the Indian cricket team before Rahul Dravid's appointment was confirmed.
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) appointed the legendary Rahul Dravid as the new head coach of the Indian men's cricket team in November this year. Dravid replaced former head coach Ravi Shastri at the helm and has already guided India to back-to-back series wins against New Zealand at home.
While India clean swept the Black Caps 3-0 in the T20I series, they won the Test series 1-0. Reports of Dravid's likely appointment as the head coach of the team had gone viral months before he took over the role with many believing there was not much competition.
BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, who has previously spoken about how he managed to convince Dravid to take the India head coach job despite him not being interested initially, has revealed there was another Indian batting legend who was keen on taking the high-profile role.
"We had Rahul in mind for a long period of time, both me and Jay, but he wasn't agreeing because of the time away from home [and] because doing a national team's job is [about being] on the road for about 8-9 months in a year and he has two young children," Ganguly said on chat show Backstage with Boria.
He revealed Indian legend VVS Laxman was one of the former cricketers interested in the India head coach post. Laxman, who has not coached a national side before, has served as the mentor of Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL and has also worked as a batting consultant for Bengal in the domestic circuit.
Ganguly revealed Laxman wanted to work with the Indian team but things didn't work out for him to replace Shastri. The BCCI president also stated that the batting legend will get a chance to work with the national team in the future.
“He (Laxman) was keen on the national team job, but that couldn’t worked out. But somewhere down the line, he would have that opportunity to coach the national team," Ganguly added.
Laxman has givenup his mentor's role at Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL to move to Bangalore and replace Dravid as the new Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru. Dravid was serving as the head of NCA before taking the India head coach role.