Two more coaches quit the National Cricket Academy

National Cricket Academy, Bangalore

Two top coaches Dinesh Nanavati and Bharat Arun have quit the National Cricket Academy (NCA) at Bangalore, joining a long list of coaches who have already quit in the past few months.

Dinesh Nanavati was the batting coach and Bharat Arun – the bowling coach at the NCA, and were playing important roles in the development of players who trained at the academy. Their resignation has led to the questioning of the BCCI’s plans of redeveloping the NCA.

The NCA has been without the services of its director Sandeep Patil after he was named the chairman of the national selection panel. The BCCI has also axed six members of the technical staff of the NCA including V Venkataram who is a bowling coach, R Sridhar the fielding coach, Satish Chimote the assistant coach , VP Sudarsanthe – the physiotherapist, and Nagendra Prasad and Anand Date who are the strength and conditioning coaches.

This leaves the NCA with only 4 full time members in its technical division, reported Cricinfo.

There have been reports that NCA chairman Ranjib Biswal and Prof Ratnakar Shetty, the general manager for game development, are looking to cut operational costs by reducing the permanent staff and including former cricketers in their place.

The decision to downsize may impact the functioning of the NCA, especially with the resignation of these two coaches.

But presently former players such as Sanjay Bangar, Sunil Joshi and Deep Dasgupta have conducted camps for players over 19 years of age.

Similarly Kiran More, Mukund Parmar, Venkatesh Prasad and Venkatapathy Raju have also conducted U-25 camps in Mysore. These camps have allayed fears, as its was felt that the NCA may not be able to function with the exit of the permanent coaches.

Dinesh Nanavati has said that he has quit to due to health reasons as he is a diabetic, and had been living with his sister, who took care of him in Bangalore. “Since she decided to move out of Bangalore, I felt it was better to be at home in Mumbai. So I resigned in May and was relieved at the end of the Under-19 camp on July 6,” Nanavati said.

It remains to be seen how the NCA will cope with these resignations.