Anil Kumble to be grilled by Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman for India coach's job

Former Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble, who is understood to be among the front-runners for the post of Indian cricket team’s coach, is set to face his former team-mates — Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman — who are part of Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) high-profile Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) on Tuesday in an interview.

The process to pick India’s coach has gathered pace after the CAC along with the coordinator Sanjay Jagdale held their first meeting on Saturday. BCCI had earlier shortlisted 21 candidates out of the 57 applications received for the job. However, it is believed that the committee has further cut down the number, whom they will interview in Kolkata on Tuesday, as reported by  Times of India .

Kumble and few other high-profile names in the running, don’t fulfill all the criteria —  he hasn’t coached any international or First Class team, nor has he passed any course from the National Cricket Academy — so the CAC has been given freedom by the BCCI to interview any candidate outside the shortlisted 21.

The CAC will have little time to forward its recommendations to BCCI’s working committee, which meets on 24 June in Dharamsala to ratify the final decision on India’s coach.

It is believed that Ravi Shastri —  who functioned as Indian team’s technical director till the ICC World T20 in March — along with Kumble are the two front-runners to land the big job. So Tendulkar, Laxman and Ganguly, who were team-mates with Kumble for a long period of time, being a part of the committee might work in the leg-spinners favour. The trio are well aware of what Kumble can bring to the table.

However, it is also understood that the committee would be seeking opinions of some of the senior players in the Indian cricket team, before forwarding their recommendations to the working committee. That might aid Shastri’s bid to become India’s next full-time coach as he may have a good rapport with many of the current Indian players.

The decision about India’s next coach is likely to be taken on 24 June, but in case the CAC takes time to forward its recommendations, BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur would be authorised by the working committee to approve CAC’s recommendations, as revealed by secretary Ajay Shirke to Times of India.