NEW DELHI: Anil Kumble , the former India Test captain and the country’s most successful bowler, has been named as the coach of the men’s cricket team, with his one-year tenure to begin with India’s four-Test tour of the West Indies in July. The announcement was made on Thursday in Dharamsala, where the BCCI is holding its first annual cricket conclave, with board president Anurag Thakur and its secretary Ajay Shirke naming Kumble in a press conference.There was speculation that Ravi Shastri , who was team director until April, would be accommodated in the position of batting coach but Thakur said that the remainder of the coaching staff had not been chosen. Applicants for the remainder of the coaching staff have until the end of June to submit their applications, which leaves the BCCI to pick a batting, bowling and fielding coach before India fly to the Caribbean in the first week of July.This is the first coaching role for Kumble, India’s greatest match-winner with 619 Test wickets and 337 in ODIs, and something of a surprise given that he has no prior coaching experience at international or first-class level, which was one of the BCCI’s criteria for applicants. The 45-year-old was the last of the high-profile applicants to throw his name into the hat and, given his gigantic reputation and cricketing pedigree, this sudden development threw the BCCI’s hiring process for Indian’s coach into something of a tizzy.Until he threw his name into the ring, the leading candidate for head coach was Kumble’s former India team-mate Shastri - they played five Tests together in the early 1990s - under whose watch from August 2014 to April 2016 India reached the semi-finals of two major ICC tournaments, rose to No 1 in the ICC Test rankings for eight weeks and beat Australia in Australia in a landmark 3-0 T20I series, apart from winning this year’s Asia Cup. Kumble’s appointment, much like that fizzing delivery which won him many, many wickets for India, is a proper googly.The BCCI’s Cricket Advisory Committee ( CAC ) comprising Sachin Tendulkar , Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman with Sanjay Jagdale as the conveyor had met on Wednesday to deliberate on the presentations made by the applicants a day before. Kumble, Shastri, Lalchand Rajput, Praveen Amre and Tom Moody were the five applicants who were interviewed after the board shortlisted 21 names from the initial list of 57 applicants. A day later, Kumble was announced as the choice for the most high-profile coaching job in international cricket.Kumble - one of just two bowlers to have taken all ten wickets in a Test innings - is well respected among the Indian cricket fraternity, which appears to have earned him favour. Additionally, his no-nonsense attitude as a player and captain would likely have won him votes. During his tenure as captain of India’s Test team from November 2007 to October 2008, a period in which they won home Tests against Pakistan, South Africa and Australia and a famous away game in Perth, Kumble is believed to have instilled in several of his younger team-mates a win-at-all-costs attitude.Though he has no formal coaching experience, Kumble has been a mentor for two IPL franchises, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians. Past administrational profiles include serving as president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association chairman of the NCA when Patil was its director and head of the BCCI’s technical committee. Currently, Kumble chairs the ICC cricket committee. Kumble played with and led Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman in Tests and it is believed that his stature was the key factor in the decorated trio accommodating his application among the other candidates. Kumble’s presentation to the CAC in Kolkata on Tuesday, TOI Sports has learnt, left a serious impression on his former team-mates and Jagdale.India, led by Kohli, head to the West Indies in the first week of July and pre-tour camp will be held from June 29 at Bangalore’s National Cricket Academy. It was in the West Indies, famously, that perhaps the most abiding memory of Kumble’s steeliness came to the fore: during a Test match in 2002, bowling with a bandage over his fractured jaw for 14 stirring overs in which he got the prized wicket of Brian Lara. Sixteen years later, an evolving Indian team will do well to imbibe that sense of resilience and competitiveness from the man himself, in his most significant role since he stopped bowling with the India logo on his chest eight years ago.