CoA chief clears doubts over Dravid's future, says he won't tour with senior team

BCCI Committee of Administrators (CoA) chief Vinod Rai on Saturday clarified doubts over Rahul Dravid's future, saying the former India skipper will not be available for the senior team's tours abroad due to his commitments with the India A and Under-19 sides.

Speaking after his meeting with the BCCI officials, Rai insisted that all the issues regarding Dravid's contract are sorted and that he has been hired on full time basis for two years.

"Dravid's contract issues are all sorted. He has a two-year full-time contract (India A and U19). The only thing is he said that he will not be available for tours abroad (senior team). He does not want to hang around because he has got a job in hand," Rai said.

Meanwhile, the BCCI CoA chief also revealed that they are trying to sort out contract issues of former left-arm paceman Zaheer Khan, because he is still associated with Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Delhi Daredevils.

Rai also insisted that the board is struggling to create a template in case of Zaheer and are trying to create a balance between his IPL contract and his consultancy role.

"We thought that we must prepare a template. Where Zaheer and Dravid will definitely appear in the panel depending upon the type of coach required at any point of time. So we are in the process of fixing a template. But the template will be fixed only after consulting the persons involved. We have spoken to both (Rahul Dravid and Zaheer Khan) regarding the same. But the problem is just this that if Zaheer has to be taken as a coach and at the same time if he has to engage with the IPL team how do we fit it in," he said.

Rai also cleared the air about the perception that the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), comprising of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, and V.V.S Laxman, has been insulted in the process.

"The CAC, in all fairness, has spent a lot of time on this. They are busy people. They are people on whom we have totally trusted. They had spent so much of time and effort for absolutely no other reason interest, except the fact that they want to provide us with good coach," Rai emphasised.

Last week, newly-appointed Indian head coach Ravi Shastri announced his "core coaching team" for the next two years.

Bharat Arun was appointed as bowling coach, while R. Sridhar was appointed fielding coach. Former batting coach Sanjay Bangar was named the assistant coach till the 2019 World Cup.

Shastri, at the press conference, had also dismissed that the move by the cricket board will cause any heartburn in Zaheer Khan and Rahul Dravid, who were initially appointed as bowling and batting coach by the CAC.

On the related note, Vinod Rai had earlier said that there were 'no appointments' of Zaheer and Dravid and those were just recommendations made by the three-member CAC.

Later on, the BCCI clarified that Zaheer will only be available as overseas bowling coach of Team India and will travel with the team on tour-to-tour basis.