“My good friend Shazzy, you’ve done wonders,” Wasim Akram congratulates India’s outgoing coach Ravi Shastri
Ravi Shastri stepped down as India's head coach after 4 years in charge
The former Pakistan fast bowler Wasim Akram reckons Ravi Shastri had a wonderful stint as the head coach of the Indian cricket team in the last 3 years even though he couldn’t guide India to the knockouts in his last tournament which was the T20 World Cup 2021.
Wasim Akram was talking about Shastri on a Pakistani show named A-Sports where he mentioned that in international cricket, the players don’t need too much technical coaching because they get that at the junior and domestic level.
What’s required from a coach at the international level is man-management ability because he has to handle different characters, manage them and ensure that all of them are on the same and are playing with the same philosophy.
Wasim Akram and Ravi Shastri have known each other for a long time
“My good friend, Shazzy. It was your last tournament as a coach and I think you’ve done wonders in the last three years,” Akram said addressing Shastri on A-Sports.
Wasim Akram later also posted a message for Shastri and the outgoing Indian T20I skipper Virat Kohli on koov app where he lauded Virat for being an outstanding captain for India, not just in the shortest format of the game, but in the other formats as well.
Akram pointed out the fact that Virat Kohli could have easily come out and scored some runs against Namibia in his last match as the T20I skipper, but he rather gave the opportunity to Suryakumar Yadav who was playing his first World Cup and that’s a fine example of leadership again.
Virat is supposed to remain the captain of the Indian test team going forward, but the question marks are still there over his ODI captaincy as BCCI is yet to take a call on it. There have been reports that the Indian selectors might not want different captains for the two formats of white-ball cricket.
