Kirsten unfolds sweet stories before getting appointment as India coach
Image : Collected
|| Desk Report ||
Former South Africa veteran batsman Gary Kirsten has revealed some interesting stories before getting appointed as India coach for the second time.
India lifted the coveted 50-over World Cup trophy under the guideline of Gary Kirsten for the second time after the 1983 World Cup led by Kapil Dev.
“I got an email from Sunil Gavaskar - would I consider coaching the Indian team,” Kirsten recalled.
“I thought it was a hoax. I never even answer it. He sent me another email, and said, ‘Will you come for an interview’? I showed it to the wife, and she said, ‘They must have the wrong person’. So it’s a bizarre entry into the whole thing, and rightly so. I mean, I had no coaching experience or anything,” he said.
Kirsten also shared some interesting stories when he met former India captain Anil Kumble in the meeting.
“I went for the interview, it was a bizarre experience in many ways because I kind of arrived at the interview and I see Anil Kumble, who’s the current Indian captain, and he says, ‘What are you doing here?,” he said.
“I said, ‘I have come for an interview to coach you!’. So we kinda laugh about it. It was quite a laughing matter,” Kirsten told the media.
Kirsten, who did not have any prior experience of coaching an international team before, further recalled how Shastri, one of the people interviewing him for the position, broke the ice with an interesting question.
“...I am in this board meeting with these BCCI officials, and it was quite an intimidating environment; the secretary of the board said, ‘Mr. Kirsten would you like to present your vision for the future of Indian Cricket?’, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t have one.’ No one had asked me to prepare anything for it. I had just arrived there,” Kirsten said.
“Ravi Shastri, who was on the committee, said to me, ‘Gary, tell us, what did you guys as the South African team do to beat the Indians?’. I thought it was a great ice-breaker, because I could answer it and I answered it in about two-three minutes without saying strategies that we kind of probably use to this day,” he said.
As it turns out, it was just a matter of time - seven minutes to be precise - before Kirsten got the job.
“He was suitably impressed, as was the rest of the board, because three minutes later – I had been in at the interview for about seven minutes – the secretary of the board slides across a contract to me,” he added.
