Former South African cricketer and World Cup winning coach Gary Kirsten has said that he got the contract for India Coach with Greg Chappell’s name, which had to be corrected.
Speaking Talksport’s Following on podcast, Kirsten recalled the bizzaer series of events that led to him becoming Indian coach.
He said that he received a mail from Sunil Gavaskar out of nowhere about his interests in coaching the Indian team, which he did not believe. “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.”
He said that when he went for the interview, then India captain had no clue about him being the candidate for India coach. “I see Anil Kumble, who’s the current Indian captain, and he says, ‘What are you doing here?’. I said, ‘I have come for an interview to coach you!’. So we kinda laugh about it. It was quite a laughing matter.”
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Kirsten was intimidated in the interview and when the secretary of the BCCI asked him for the roadmap for Indian cricket, he had no clue. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t have one.’ No one had asked me to prepare anything for it. I had just arrived there.”
Soon after, Ravi Shastri, who was one of the panelists asked him about how they beat India during his playing days. The question kind of eased him and he talked about it for a few minutes.
“He was suitably impressed, as was the rest of the board, because three minutes later – I had been in in the interview about seven minutes – the secretary of the board slides across a contract to me.” However, when the contract was given to him, he was shocked to Greg’s name instead of his.
“So I slide the contract back and I say, ‘Sir, I think you have given me your previous coach’s contract. He kind of looks at it a little bit perturbed, and takes out a pen from his pocket, scratches out his [Chappell] name and writes my name on it.”
Though the contract had Kirsten’s name, he had no idea about the pay. Nevertheless, he was happy to take what Chappell was being paid. “Then slides the contract back. So now I have my name on the contract. The beautiful thing about that was I didn’t have a clue what I should be paid. But then, obviously, with Chappell’s package there, I thought, ‘Well, let me just keep it the same!’ I am happy with what he was getting paid. That was it.’
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