BCCI's Cricket Advisory Committee under scrutiny for sacking WV Raman as India's Women coach

On Thursday, May 14, BCCI appointed Ramesh Powar as India’s women’s team head coach. Ramesh previously worked with the women’s team in 2018 and under his guidance, the team reached the semi-finals during the 2018 T20 World Cup. However, he was abruptly removed from his position after a feud with senior batter Mithali Raj. 

Powar was succeeded by WV Raman, under whom India performed brilliantly. Raman was considered as one of the best coaches to have coached the Indian team. Under him, India reached the finals of the 2020 World Cup. He also applied for the post of head coach and appeared for the interview too.

However, Madan Lal-headed Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) preferred Raman over Powar. The sacking of WV Raman raised quite a few eyebrows in the cricket fraternity. A senior member also questioned the participation of Madan Lal as he is over 70 years and isn’t eligible to participate as a member of CAC, which comprises of three members in Lal, Sulakshana Naik, and RP Singh. 

“Maddi paaji (that’s how Madan Lal is addressed in Indian cricket fraternity) celebrated his 70th birthday on March 20, 2021. The BCCI, in its appeal to the Supreme Court against some of the reforms, doesn’t ask for a roll-back of age-cap of 70 years. So how come Madan Lal was allowed to sit in a CAC meeting?” a senior member asked as quoted by NDTV.

Sulakshana Naik played a major role in the sacking of WV Raman

A source close to the development made a startling revelation as he claimed that Sulakshana had already made her mind regarding selecting Ramesh Powar as in the interviews she seemed biased. “One surprising question that Raman was asked was how can he claim credit for women’s team reaching T20 final as this is a team that was prepared by Ramesh Powar,” the source said.

“Even if we presume that Ramesh and Mithali Raj had problems back then and it wasn’t good enough ground to remove Ramesh, do two wrongs make a right. If you go by the argument Sulakshana gave during Raman’s 45-minute presentation, by that logic, Ramesh is inheriting a team that Raman prepared,” he countered.

It is speculated that Raman’s sacking has something to do with his fall-out with Neetu David while selecting the squad for the South Africa tour of India. A major controversy erupted when Shafali Verma was not picked for the ODIs and senior pacer Shikha Pandey was inexplicably dropped.

Raman wasn’t happy with the exclusion of Shikha and Shafali. Instead of the aforementioned players, the selectors picked leg-spinner C Prathyusha and left-arm seamer Monica Patel who experienced a torrid outing.

Indian cricketers turned politicians