Harbhajan Singh Backs England’s Split Coaching, Wants India To Follow Policy
Harbhajan Singh backs split-coaching policy (Pic: Twitter)
Former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh has backed the idea of having format-based coach for the Indian team. The legendary spinner believes that the Indian team management should adopt split coaching policy, and cited the example of England cricket team and their recent run of success following the same.
Singh says team should have two coaches
The cricketer-turned-commentator recently praised the England team for hiring Brendon McCullum as their Test coach, while having Matthew Mott helming their limited-overs sides. The 42-year-old stated that Team India should follow the same policy by bringing in a new coach for T20Is.
As of now, batting legend Rahul Dravid is serving as India’s coach across all formats. He replaced previous coach Ravi Shastri when the latter stepped down from the role following India’s crashing exit from the 2021 T20 World Cup in UAE.
Singh backed his ex-teammates Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra as favourites for the T20I job, considering the latter of the two even won an IPL title for Gujarat Titans alongside Hardik Pandya’s captaincy.
Notably, Pandya has been commanding Team India in T20I cricket for a while, with regular all-format skipper Rohit Sharma taking sporadic breaks from the truncated format.
“Yes, you have two captains, so you can have two coaches. Why not? Someone whose planning is different. Like England has done with Brendon McCullum. Someone like Virender Sehwag or Ashish Nehra who worked with Gujarat Titans and Hardik Pandya won his first tournament (IPL) as captain.”
“The coach knows that focus is on T20 cricket. Say if Ashish Nehra is the T20 coach, then he knows that his job is to make the Indian team champions in the T20 format, and Rahul Dravid knows he has to work on how the Indian team can be No.1 in Tests and ODIs.”
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