Mumbai Cricketers Recommend Omkar Salvi for the Head Coach

The Mumbai cricketers have recommended the name of Omkar Salvi for the position of head coach, which was vacant after former India stumper Sameer Dighe quit.

Meanwhile, Salvi has been with the Mumbai side as the bowling coach for the last four seasons. Also, he is the brother of former India and Mumbai pacer, Avishkar Salvi.

However, his contract ended after the last season. Interestingly, Omkar had never represented Mumbai in the domestic circuit.

As per reports, Unmesh Khanvilkar, the secretary of the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), invited six top Mumbai players to discuss the way forward for Mumbai Cricket.

The list included the likes of skipper Aditya Tare, Suryakumar Yadav, Abhishek Nayar, Dhawal Kulkarni and Shardul Thakur.

Committee of Administrators (COA) has likely raised the idea of this kind of a meeting.

“It was a laudable initiative by the MCA. We were asked for our views on possible options for the post of Mumbai coach, physio and trainer. While we asked Khanvilkar to consult the National Cricket Academy (NCA) for the role of trainer and physio, all of us spoke in favour of Salvi as coach. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of each one of us and has seen our ups and downs. Having worked with three previous coaches of Mumbai – Pravin Amre, Chandrakant Pandit and Sameer Dighe – he has a fair bit of experience of coaching at this level. He coached a team during the Mumbai T20 league too,” a player told TOI on Wednesday. “If not him, then Amre, or Nayar (as a player cum mentor), would be a good choice,” he added.

He also expressed his delight towards MCA for consulting with the players before taking a decision. The CoA will meet new CIC chairman, former India all-rounder Ajit Agarkar, who’s also the chief selector on Thursday to discuss the issue.

In another interesting development, MCA has now made yo-yo tests compulsory for the Under-23 and Ranji players.

Moreover, they don’t have a physio and trainer in place for the senior team. To make it worse, Amogh Pandit, the trainer at the MCA’s BKC academy, too has quit.

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