Indian team needs a mentor more than a coach: Gavaskar

Even as the Cricket Board is looking to finalise Team India coach after the departure of Duncan Fletcher, former captain Sunil Gavaskar today said that the team required a mentor rather than a coach.
"You need somebody like a mentor. At the international level you need something like that. You need the coach at the junior level when you are getting up and looking for a career (in cricket). That is to correct the technical faults and stuff like that," said Gavaskar here.
"At the highest level you need someone who puts his arm around you and tells you this is the way to do this," added the former India opener after launching the book 'As Luck Would Have It', written by another former Test opener, Madhav Apte, at a well-attended function.

Speaking about the book, Gavaskar recalled how 'luck' played a big part since early on in his life.
Terming how one of his relatives found out and rectified the baby switch - that saw him lying next to a fisherwoman before being restored to his birth mother - as a stroke of luck, the legendary opener recalled his first series in the West Indies where he enjoyed large slices of fortunes on way to make a record tally of 776 runs.
Gavaskar recalled how a fielder of the calibre of Sir Garfield Sobers dropped a few catches off his bat and allowed him to get a flying start in his career while at the same time pouching a great catch to send back fellow-opener Kenia Jayantilal who opened in the first Test of the 1971 series, which he (Gavaskar) did not play.