India Women Get New Head Coach

After a lengthy debate considering all the opinions of the experienced team mates and the ad-hoc panel, a head coach has been finally appointed for the Indian Women’s team. The former Indian opener WV Raman who represented in the 80’s and 90’s has been entrusted with this responsibility and will succeed Ramesh Powar in the role.

Powar served as an interim head coach and his tenure ended with the recently concluded Women’s World T20 in West Indies in which India were knocked out in the semi-final by the England Women’s team. And the tournament was followed by serious allegations from the Indian women’s veteran player Mithali Raj who was dropped for the all-important semis clash!

For this head coach selection process, an ad-hoc panel comprising of Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shanta Rangaswamy was formed by the Indian Cricket Board. And the panel has shortlisted three candidates Gary Kristen, WV Raman and Venkatesh Prasad (in the same order) for the head coach role and the same has been shared with the Committee of Administrators (CoA) and BCCI.

Gary Kristen has been recently appointed as the head coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore franchise in the Indian Premier League tournament and he was also the panel’s first choice for the Indian Women’s team head coach role. With a conflict of interest ruling him out, WV Raman who was the second choice in the list has been appointed as Indian Women’s team head coach.

“Even as there were several questions asked, a few basic questions involved were coaching credentials, how do they plan to take forward the team and how many languages they can speak in. We then asked them about their expectations, what kind of support staff they would be needing and similar. We came up with our decision on the basis of that,” said Anshuman Gaekwad, one of the members of the panel, regarding the selection process that they went through while picking the three candidates.

WV Raman has a good record of coaching career. He served as a head coach for Bengal in two different terms (2001-02 & 2010-13) and also served in the same role for Tamil Nadu during 2005-07. Apart from the state teams, Raman played the assistant coach role for Kings XI Punjab during IPL 2013 and as a batting consultant for Kolkata Knight Riders during IPL 2014.

Starting from the year 2015, Raman has been working as a batting consultant at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bangalore. During this period, he helped teams in Duleep Trophy alongside serving in the backroom staff for India A and Under 19 teams.

Keep reading ReadScoops.com for similar updates from Indian Women’s Cricket Team.

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