India to get new chief coach in September

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) may appoint separate chief coaches for the Test and limited-overs teams next month, BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur said on Thursday.

Thakur said a decision in this regard will be taken in consultation with the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) before the start of the home series against South Africa which begins in October.

"I think it is very important to have a full-time coach for any team. We have taken some time to decide and most probably in the month of September, we will finalise the coach," Thakur told 'Sony Six'.

Thakur also informed that the board may retain national team director Ravi Shastri in an advisory role with the Indian squad since several players have given positive feedback about his performance.

"Shastri is holding the position of the director for the last few months and he has done well with the Indian cricket team, the boys have given us a good feedback about him, so the only issue is if we want a full time coach then what would be the set-up. We can't be having 10 people with the Indian cricket team," Thakur said.

"So, we have left it to the Cricket Advisory Committee to decide how many people will be required, how many coaches will be required, whether a bowling coach, a batting coach, a full-time coach or a director," he added.

"Let them take a call, come back to BCCI in September and before the South Africa series, I can assure you that we will take a call on that."

The BCCI's opposition to the Decision Review System (DRS) has come back to haunt the Indian team on several occasions, the latest being the first Test of the ongoing three-match series against Sri Lanka in Galle.

But Thakur said that the BCCI is not ready change its stance on the technology just yet.

"It is not about an individual or an association to be against a system. I think we have to see why we don't have a 100 percent system, or we have to make our mind that it is not going to be 100 percent," Thakur said.

"I think if you look at the past few months, you will see that we have lost many matches and then we come back and say 'oh, we have lost this match, let's look at the DRS'.

"I think it is not only when we lose a match we should look at the system but we need to look at the overall feasibility of it, whether it is practical, whether it is close to 100 percent, whether it will help the decision to be implemented, if that is there, we have never closed our mind to that," he added.

International Cricket Committee (ICC) general manager Geoff Allardice and ICC cricket committee chief Anil Kumble - who is also the chairman of the BCCI's technical committee - travelled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US recently where they discussed the scheduled testing of the performance of review technologies being used in cricket with engineers from MIT's field intelligence lab.

"Anil Kumble and others had gone to the US to look at the system and see if we can improve it further. I think there are areas where we can look at and improve it to next level. If that is possible, the options are never closed."