Two senior coaches resign from NCA

Two senior members of the National Cricket Academy's coaching staff, batting coach Dinesh Nanavati and bowling coach Bharat Arun, have resigned, putting a question mark on the BCCI's plans of restructuring the Bangalore institution.

Nanavati and Arun were the latest in a string of recent departures from the NCA, which has been without a director since Sandeep Patil was appointed chairman of the national selectors last September. On May 1, the BCCI had terminated the services of six of its technical staff at NCA including bowling coach V Venkataram, fielding coach R Sridhar, assistant coach Satish Chimote, physiotherapist and strength and conditioning coaches VP Sudarsan, Nagendra Prasad and Anand Date.

As a result, the NCA finds itself with just four full-time employees in its technical wing - Dr Kinjal Suratwala (head, sports science and coach education), strength and conditioning coach PV Sudarsan and physiotherapists Nitin Patel and Ashish Kaushik. Patel has been with the Indian team for a better part of the last year.

In the absence of a director, NCA chairman Ranjib Biswal and Prof Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI's general manager, game development, had decided to reduce the academy's operating costs by sacking the permanent staff and instead involved former cricketers in coaching.

However, the situation is likely to impact the functioning of the academy in a big way if the board doesn't find replacements soon. One source at the NCA said the director's absence didn't matter much since the academy's workings had been streamlined but the two latest resignations would have an impact.

So far, though, the downsizing at the NCA doesn't seem to have affected the off-season camps. Sanjay Bangar, Deep Dasgupta and Sunil Joshi had conducted a camp for over-19s last month. Prior to that was an Under-25 camp in Mysore, conducted by Kiran More, Venkatesh Prasad, Mukund Parmar and Venkatapathy Raju, and an Under-19 camp in Bangalore with Narendra Hirwani, Debasis Mohanty and WV Raman.

The timing of Nanavati's and Arun's resignations had given rise to speculation about the reasons but it appears they both parted company on good terms with the NCA. Nanavati, 64, has been a diabetic for a while and his sister was taking 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.

Though Arun, who resigned last week, couldn't be reached for a comment, it appears that he resigned since he had a good offer from the TNCA in Chennai, where his family is based.