Virat Kohli

Ravi Shastri

Anil Kumble

New Zealand

Ajinkya Rahane looked clueless in the 3rd Test

Ajinkya Rahane

Rajneesh Gupta

Shastri was drafted when team failed overseas, but under him India have done worse — be it ICC events or Tests in Eng, SA & NZ.Great players and great teams break traditions and set new trends. Great coaches take players from nowhere to the peak or remould them from one-trick pony to all- weather champions.Professional players and coaches are not judged by how well they fought but on how many times they won outside their comfort zone. The fight can make for a good movie or an emotion-filled book. It’s doubtful if anyone would have made a movie on the Titanic if it had not sunk!The current Indian Test side is not great. And please don’t say ‘when have we had a great India Test team?’ But unlike this one, none in the history claimed to be one – the Bradman’s of the 40s, Lloyd’s of the 70s or Steve Waugh’s of the 90s and early 2000s.andhave helmed this as captain and coach respectively for more than five years now. When Kohli took over from MS Dhoni as Test captain in late 2014 in Australia, Shastri was the team director, appointed in August 2014, after a Test series loss to England in England.Shastri was forced to take a break whenwas appointed head coach in 2016 but was back as at the helm post the Champions Trophy in 2017 and retained his position since. The former India all-rounder had the task of taking India to wins in the ICC tournaments and in Test series when the team travelled to places like England, South Africa, Australia andBut Shastri has been an abject failure on that account. It was 4-1 in England, 2-1in South Africa (India won a dead rubber), 2-0 in New Zealand. The 2-1 win in Australia hadn’t come, as Shastri said, without gote in the muuhh (balls in moth) moment.In his own words, Shastri was the boss despite Duncan Fletcher being the coach during the 2015 World Cup where India crashed out in the semis. He was the coach in 2019 when, again, India crashed out in the last-four stage. He was the head when India lost to the West Indies in the semi-finals of the 2016 T20 WC. In fact, India did better under others – won the Champions Trophy in 2013 under Fletcher and reached the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy under Kumble.The Titanic has sunk. It has world’s best batsman in the form of Kohli, it has the best fast bowler in the form of Jasprit Bumrah, it has the most experienced spinner in R Ashwin and it has the best support staff in form of Bharat Arun, R Sridhar and Vikram Rathour. But it has still sunk.Shastri seldom shies away from claiming that this is the best Indian team ever. Someone told him fake stats about how the Indian fast bowlers are better than the West Indies and he blurted them out during a press conference in Australia. The fact is that the bowlers have again and again found it impossible to dismiss the lower order. Sam Curran in England and Kyle Jamieson in New Zealand are a couple of examples.For him Prithvi Shaw is a mixture of Tendulkar, Lara and Sehwag. But the so-called best man-manager in the world has failed to stop the youngster him from straying. During the tour to Sri Lanka in 2017, Shastri was asked what was his exact role, as he has a battery of assistant coaches under him, and his reply was it was to motivate the players and get the best out of them.One can only assume that he is not alame duck in front of Kohli. He claims to have had many arguments over various team issues with the captain. If not equal, he must have played some role in dropping of Cheteshwar Pujara in England,in South Africa and the musical chair between the spinners, where at times Kuldeep Yadav is the best spinner in the overseas conditions, on other days Ashwin is picked only to be dropped after one Test in favours of Ravindra Jadeja -- like it happened in New Zealand recently.He can’t claim that the men he coaches are novices in the alien conditions. Even the fringe players get exposure to all sorts of conditions. As our statsmantells us, since 2015 New Zealand went on just two A tours, while India A in the same period toured New Zealand twice and Australia, South Africa, England and West indies once each.You don’t become great by beating mediocrity. Take the example of Novak Djokovic. His 17 Grand Slams have come in the era of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. This Indian team doesn’t command the Great tag. Even the Titanic was called great.