The man known as Jumbo beat out competition from Ravi Shastri, who was Team India’s Technical Director for a period of 18 months preceding the IPL.

The committee comprising greats Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly had interviewed 10 candidates for the job in Kolkata on Tuesday in a marathon session which lasted close to 10 hours. And having played a lot of their cricket together, it perhaps should come as no surprise that the trio went for Kumble, who is also said to have a made an excellent presentation about his vision for Indian cricket’s future.

Saying that the Indian team can afford the best coach BCCI President Anurag Thakur said that his record speaks for itself — 619 wickets from 132 Tests and 337 wickets in 271 ODIs, apart from 2506 Test match runs with a hundred in England.

“It is not about Indian or foreign, it is about who is best for the job. I think we have used the services of best players who have served Indian cricket. There was no such limitation that we have to have only an Indian coach. We wanted the best for the Indian team,” he added. 

The former leg-spinner played 132 Test matches and 271 ODIs in a career spanning close to two decades. Kumble finished his Test career with 619 scalps and accumulated 337 ODI wickets which put his combined tally at 956 in two formats. The leg-spinner was the only bowler after England’s Jim Laker to have taken all 10 wickets in a Test innings.

With PTI inputs