Ravi Shastri’s ice-breaker helped me land India job, reveals Gary Kirsten
Former Indian head coach Gary Kirsten narrated the funny incident behind him getting the team India job and revealed that it was an intelligent ice-breaker from Ravi Shastri which helped him land the job. Kirsten also revealed that he mistook an official email from Sunil Gavaskar to be a hoax.
Legendary South African batsman Gary Kirsten took over the top job in India, the head coach of the national cricket team, in 2008, and worked wonders, helping the side scale heights that no one expected them to. After a somewhat slow start, Kirsten’s ideologies started picking up pace and paid dividends with time and eventually, the Proteas capped off his tenure by helping the side lift its first World Cup title in 28 years, in 2011.
However, as revealed by the man himself, Kirsten, who had no prior international coaching experience before landing the India job, was selected rather bizarrely - through an interview which lasted just seven minutes. Speaking on the ‘Cricket Collective’ podcast, Kirsten revealed that he entered the interview unprepared, having no presentation to show the interviewers, but then was helped by an ice-breaker from Ravi Shastri, who asked the southpaw about the strategy the Proteas used to beat India. Kirsten revealed that Shastri’s ice-breaker helped him eventually land the job.
“...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 on the ‘Cricket Collective’ podcast, reported Hindustan Times.
“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 was suitably impressed, as was the rest of the board, because three minutes later – I had been in at the interview about seven minutes – the secretary of the board slides across a contract to me.”
Kirsten, who left the India job in 2011, recalled that he was first approached for the job by Sunil Gavaskar, who sent the Proteas man an email. The 52-year-old, however, funnily revealed that he initially mistook Gavaskar’s email to be a hoax, thinking that he was unqualified to be team India’s coach, given he had no prior coaching experience.
“I got an email from Sunil Gavaskar - would I consider coaching the Indian team. 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 was a bizarre entry into the whole thing, and rightly so. I mean, I had no coaching experience or anything,” Kirsten recalled.
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