Ravi Shastri top contestant for Indian cricket team coach; CAC will interview only 6

The quest for the new Indian cricket team coach is about to finish as July 9 is the last date to apply for the job. Earlier, Sourav Ganguly declared that the selection process will be conducted on July 10. For the record, BCCI received ten applications which include Shastri, Virender Sehwag, Tom Moody, Richard Pybus, Dodda Ganesh, Lalchand Rajput, Lance Klusener, Rakesh Sharma (Oman national team coach), Phil Simmons and Upendranath Bramhachari (engineer with no cricketing background).

PTI reported that the CAC will interview six of the ten candidates. The likely candidates are Shastri, Sehwag, Moody, Simmons, Pybus and Rajput. The new coach will be contracted for next two years.

Anil Kumble resigned from the position on June 20 owing to his "untenable" relationship with Indian skipper Virat Kohli. In the initial stage, Shastri was not interested to apply for the role of the coach, and didn't apply when the first deadline for applications closed, because of the treatment he faced last year. Shastri was the director of the team from 2014 to 2016 and was then one of the front-runners in last year’s coach selection but CAC gave priority to Kumble.

The former skipper jumped into the hunt and has again become the hot favourite, possibly on account of his equation with the Indian skipper.

Apart from Shastri, Sehwag is the other favourite for the job. He worked with the Kings XI Punjab as a mentor, but the team failed to have a positive season.