BCCI officials oppose CoA’s decision to nominate Rahul Dravid for Dronacharya award

Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators chief Vinod Rai on Thursday announced that Rahul Dravid’s name had been proposed for the Dronacharya Award. Some of the BCCI officials have not liked this decision and feel that it would be unfair to the coaches who spend hours on youngsters to fine-tune their skills. They mentioned that it is only after their childhood coaches’ hard work that the players rise to the U-19 and India A scene and hence, they are most deserving of the award.  

The BCCI official felt that nominating Dravid three years into his coaching career will set a wrong precedent. 

Explaining his stand on the situation, a BCCI official said that legends like Dravid deserve all the recognition and awards, but Dronacharya award is particularly for the coaches and must be given to them only. He felt that it would be unfair to the coaches who have toiled hard to get their players to play some good level of cricket and Dravid still has a long way to go to deserve the award.  

“The BCCI has always recognized and appreciated the immense contribution of Dravid. He was the anchor for the Indian batting line-up for years altogether, perfectly complimenting the other greats of his era whose contributions have also been always recognized and appreciated by the BCCI. They were players such as Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan and many more. For playing the game with the excellence that they did, they were awarded by the Government of India as well with awards such as the Arjuna Award, Padma Shri, Khel Ratna and even the Bharat Ratna.

“The contributions of a Tarak Sinha or and AN Sharma or many such others who toil at the grass-root level, to the field of coaching are honestly much greater than that of Dravid at this juncture. Dravid may surpass all of them but at this point in time I sincerely feel he has not done enough. It will become clear if you even peruse the criteria for the Dronacharya award. I think the CoA has been unfair to put Dravid’s name in the hat when as per the criteria of the award, he does not qualify. One can understand the love that the CoA may have for the stars of the game but as administrators, one has to respect the foundation more than the façade,” he explained.

"As per the guidelines, for cricket and indigenous games, not included in Olympic / Asian Games / Commonwealth Games disciplines, the selection committee will take into consideration the individualsperformances / contribution of the sportspersons/coaches. In case of lifetime contribution in coaching, the selection committee will give its recommendations for such two coaches taking into consideration the contribution made by them over a period of 20 years or more in terms of producing outstanding sports-persons," said another BCCI official quoting the guidelines of the award.