Rahul Dravid will not travel with Team India on overseas tours

What’s the story?

Former India captain Rahul Dravid won’t be travelling with the national side on overseas tours owing to his full-time coaching commitments with the India-A and U-19 teams.

"Dravid's contract issues are all sorted. He has a two-year full-time contract [India A and U-19]. He has said that he is not available for tours abroad [senior team]. He does not want to hang around," said Vinod Rai, the chief of the Committee of Administrators [CoA].

In case you didn’t know…

Dravid was appointed as the batting consultant of the national side, along with head coach Ravi Shastri and bowling consultant Zaheer Khan, earlier this month. However, Shastri made it clear that both Dravid and Zaheer would be consulted as and when they are needed, and a full-time role for the two would be discussed later.

The heart of the matter

Speaking about the confusion regarding the roles of the two former Indian stars, that changed from ‘coaches’ to ‘full-time consultants’ and eventually just ‘consultants’, Rai said that after the CAC appointed Shastri as the head coach, they recommended the two names as consultants, but the BCCI’s CEO (Rahul Johri) and acting secretary (Amitabh Chaudhary) were not privy to it.

Rai also conceded that the BCCI was ‘struggling’ to form a template for Zaheer's role, because of his association with the Delhi Daredevils. Rahul Johri then added that Zaheer has been in talks with Shastri, but is unlikely to be associated with the India team before the South Africa tour.

What’s next?

Rahul Dravid will travel with the India-A side on their tour to South Africa for the limited-overs and four-day series that begin on July 26. After the Australia side pulled out owing to their ongoing pay tussle, the Afghanistan-A side will feature in the tri-series.

Author’s take

The U-19 World Cup is slated to be held next year, and a number of India-A series have been planned in the upcoming months, which will prevent Dravid from acting as the Indian team's consultant on a full-time basis.

However, it brings to the fore, once again, the fact that miscommunication between the BCCI and the CoA resulted in major confusion regarding the appointment of Zaheer and Dravid.

It is clear that the appointments were made without consulting Shastri for reasons best known to the CAC and the BCCI. Shastri showed he'll be working on his own terms by arm-twisting the BCCI into appointing Bharat Arun as the bowling coach despite having the option of availing Zaheer's services.