New Delhi
Former India opener WV Raman is the new chief coach of the Indian women’s cricket team. A three-member ad-hoc committee comprising Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad and Shantha Rangaswamy shortlisted three names after interviews were conducted in person or over Skype in Mumbai today.

The ad-hoc committee shortlisted Gary Kirsten, Raman and former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad out of the nine candidates who were interviewed. “The BCCI has appointed WV Raman as Head Coach of the Indian women’s team. His selection was based on the recommendations of the adhoc committee” a BCCI press release stated.

According to the press release, Kirsten was the first choice of the committee but he was not given the job because of his coaching contract with IPL franchisee Royal Challengers Bangalore. Raman, who was second on the committee’s preference list, thus, got the job.

Raman has worked as the India U-19 coach and is currently the batting consultant at the National Cricket Academy. It will be interesting to see how Raman goes about working with the team that has clear faultlines: The team’s One-day skipper Mithali Raj and Twenty20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur strongly differ on the issue of chief coach. Harmanpreet wanted previous coach Ramesh Powar to continue, while Mithali had blamed him for humiliating her and trying to damage her career during the recent Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies.

Raman’s appointment comes despite reservations expressed by CoA member Diana Edulji and BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry. Diana had asked BCCI CEO Rahul Johri and general manager Saba Karim to put the selection process on hold as there was no consensus in the two-member CoA on the coach issue. She had questioned Rai’s “double standards” as he had sided with Virat Kohli in his spat against then coach Anil Kumble last year, but chose to ignore Harmanpreet’s recommendation that Powar should be continued with.