Rahul Dravid for Dronacharya Award: Why not everybody is happy with BCCI's nomination for coaching honour

Rahul Dravid is universally praised- as a human being, player and as a coach. However, his nomination for the prestigious Dronacharya award by BCCI has not been universally appreciated.  Dronacharya Award is the highest honour for a sports coach in India.  

Some eyebrows have been raised after Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators chief Vinod Rai on Thursday announced that Rahul Dravid’s name had been proposed for the award. According to a report in Cricket Next, some BCCI officials believe Dravid being nominated for the Dronacharya award is unfair to others including childhood coaches of cricketers who spent hours behind the scenes before the players rose through the ranks and donned the U-19 cap or represented India A.

Dravid coached the Indian side that won the ICC Under-19 World Cup this year. Dravid is largely credited with nurturing India's young cricketers and enhancing India's bench strength through his stint at India A squad as its coach.

Those who have questioned Dravid's nomination have argued that coaches who had given blood and sweat to the likes of Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, among others have been ignored at the expense of a popular name like Dravid. 

"Rai’s decision to nominate the former skipper for the Dronacharya just three years into his coaching career sets a wrong precedent," the report quoted a senior BCCI official as saying. 

“When we speak strictly in terms of the Dronacharya Award, even a great player has to compete not on the basis of his performance as a player but solely on the basis of his performance as a coach. Not even as a mentor but as a coach. Each of the players playing in the U-19 World Cup has been coached through their childhood by a coach, at the state level by coaches at the U-14, U-16 and the U-19 levels. It was on the basis of those performances that those boys even made it to the India U-19 team. Would it be fair to ignore the immense hard-work and contribution put in by those coaches that have culminated in great performances? The key question would be whether the Dronacharya Award is given for coaching the boys or to guide them in a tournament? ", a senior BCCI official was quoted as saying by CricketNext.