Trying to understand Nitish Kumar's decision

Yesterday was an interesting day of developments in Bihar politics. Nitish Kumar the CM, who was pushing for Tejaswi Yadav's (Laloo's son) resignation post the CBI charge sheeting him in a corruption case, took the decision to quit the CM post. 

Obviously it was clear that he had the backing of BJP and was back as CM this morning. He wouldn't obviously quit if not for the assurance of BJP support. Nitish and his JDU alone cannot win elections and he needs the support of other parties to win elections. Individually RJD is stronger than JDU. 

With this move, one of the strong alliance partners of the opposition has moved back to BJP. BJP would have also felt that they cannot repeat their 2014 performance in 2019 without more alliance and they felt it is better to ally with Nitish. 

Background

Let us go back to 2013 when Modi was rising up on the BJP side and Nitish hated him to the core and he snapped the long alliance that he had with BJP. He wanted to ensure that the muslim vote is not lost. 2014 parliamentary elections changed everything when everyone lost badly in Bihar. He quit and made Jitan Ram Manjhi as the CM. Once elections were nearing he was worried that Manjhi will grow too big and came back as CM and tied up with Laloo and Congress and formed the mega alliance. The alliance won easily with Nitish being projected as the CM candidate. 

CBI conducted raid about a case of corruption when Laloo was the Railways minister. Laloo and family got 3 acres of land for letting them run 2 BNR (Bengal Nagpur Railway) hotels through a rigged process. This 3 acre property was initially sold to a benami and later transferred to a company owned by Tejashwi and Rabri. This is the reason for Tejashwi being charge sheeted. 

Nitish's Demand

Nitish wanted Tejashwi to come clean from the case - basically he wanted him to resign. Laloo was not keen to have his son quit so Nitish resigned. As I mentioned earlier he would have finalized BJP support before quitting. It would have been interesting if Laloo had called his bluff by asking his son to quit. 

The Other Player Congress

The other partner in the mega-alliance Congress is once again the easy punching bag for media which is really frustrated that there is no alternative the Modi who is becoming more powerful each day. Nitish met Rahul on Tuesday also but Rahul couldn't do anything to ensure the alliance stayed. It is easy to blame Rahul and Congress for letting the alliance wither away and its not that they don't have a share of the blame being the largest opposition party. They are not the only reason. 

Why Nitish took the decision to move back to BJP

Nitish asking Tejaswhi to quit for a charge sheet is just a reason for him to move back to BJP. There are union ministers with charge sheet who are still continuing, for that matter Nitish himself has cases of Attempt to murder and murder against him. I personally wouldn't be surprised if all these were pre-planned right from the CBI charge sheet (why else is a 13 year old case is coming back to light now?) 

What are the probable reasons for Nitish moving away now

1. There are rumors that Laloo was ok to dump Nitish and support BJP if all cases against his kids are dropped. Nitish wanted to preempt such a move and so he went with BJP.
2. There were talk about him being a PM candidate for the opposition in 2019 and it is obvious that he has high ambitions of becoming the PM. Then why did he quit, probably because he felt that BJP will be very difficult to win. Even 2014 elections BJP was growing strong when he quit, so has he learnt his lesson or will it be a repeat of 2014 mistake? Only time will tell 
3. End of the day he is the junior party in the alliance (which will not be the case with BJP - at least in Bihar) and any day Laloo can ask his son to be made the CM. 

End of the day politics is about survival, Nitish probably felt he can continue as the CM and keep his PM ambitions aside for some time. 

He is 66 now and with 2019 ruled out he will be 73 in 2024 and only in Indian politics people have career plans for such age :)

BCCI and the art of messing up Coach selection

Not sure why BCCI is so good at the art of messing up the Coach selection. 

We have had very few coaches - John Wright, Greg Chappell, Gary Kirsten, Duncan Fletcher, Ravi Shastri and Anil Kumble. The people before Wright were more of managers. 

Ford Fiasco

After Chappell left post the 2007 WC fiasco (the first instance when the coach was vetoed by the players) we had the sordid episode of BCCI announcing Graham Ford as the coach for him to decline the offer once he went back to South Africa. Even though he quoted reason of having a young family to decline the offer I feel there was something more to it. Wouldn't he have known about his young family before flying all the way to India to attend an interview? 

Chappell Fiasco

It is also funny that Chappell was suggested by Sourav Ganguly and the fall out between the two turned really ugly. Sourav and Sachin (Chappell didn't want Sachin to open in ODIs, which Sachin didn't like) were the main drivers behind Chappell not getting an extension beyond the 2007 world cup. After a disastrous campaign in West Indies, some head had to role and it was easy to let go of the coach who was not in good terms with the stars. 

The best two of the lot 

Gary Kirsten and John Wright were the best we have had. Duncan Fletcher - he has helped a few young players with their technical issues but there was nothing more to say about him. The positive with Wright and Kirsten was we had some strong captains in Sourav and Dhoni during their term and the coaches were more than happy to stay in the background. They also understood that with superstar cricketers not much can be dictated. That's one thing Chappell didn't understand. 

Craziness 2016 onwards

Coming to what has been happening in the last few years. Ravi Shastri was appointed as the Director post Fletcher. He was more the motivator rather than the strategist. Out of the blue last year he was sacked and replaced by Anil Kumble. Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman were in charge of selecting the coach. It is pretty obvious that Sourav and Shastri have some huge problems between them which was obvious based on the comments that came out during that period. No one knows why Shastri was not extended and what was the driver for Kumble to take over? 

Come 2017, we were all taken aback when there was an advertisement for the coach's role once the team left for the Champions Trophy. The reason cited was that Kumble had only 1 year contract and it was more of a process. Then came the leaks that Kohli and Kumble didn't see eye to eye and were not in communicating terms. Kohli put his foot down and got his way of getting Kumble removed from the coach's role. 

Once Kumble resigned and the application timeline was extended till 9th of July for people to apply there was an interview conducted on 10th. Was that enough time to scrutinize all the applications? On what basis were the people called for interviews? 

Five people were interviewed on 10th - Shastri, Sehwag, Lalchand Rajput, Richard Phybus and Tom Moody. Earlier it was mentioned that Phil Simmons would also be interviewed but he was not available to not interviewed. Shouldn't they have given him opportunity? That was the first proof that the whole process is a farce. 

End of the interview Ganguly mentioned the captain has to understand what the coach will do and that they are still discussing. The next day we had a leak that Shastri is the coach which was denied by BCCI and then later confirmed. Add to the announcement was Zaheer Khan being appointed as bowling coach and Dravid being asked to accompany the team for overseas tours. The same trio sacked Shastri last year, what did Shastri do in the interim which convinced them? 

There was also news that the Cricket administrators - Vinod Rai and gang pushing the trio to announce the coach yesterday itself. Not sure why the Vinod Rai gang was keen on that. It is another story that those administrators are a useless gang. 

Then came the behind the scene story - Ganguly wanted Moody and Sachin wanted Shastri. Not sure what Sachin saw in Shastri in the one year that he was convinced he should get the job. VVS with his role in Sunrisers had a conflict of interest in Moody's case so was neutral. To please Sourav, the choice of bowling coach was left to him. Shastri had wanted B Arun who was the bowling coach during his previous stint but was denied, for now. 

This leaves us with the following questions 

1) Why can't the richest cricketing body get his act together when it comes to getting the coach. We can get the best we want without issues. 

2) Is the coach selection according the whims and fancies of the Fab 3? Or that of the captain? Shouldn't we have a defined process for coach selection? 

3) Why didn't anyone try to get Kumble and Kohli work together? 

Shastri has worked out well in his earlier stint and the captain wanted him, so it should work out fine. One thing that I am definitely not fine with is how the whole thing has been handled. It is time BCCI get its act together but with the Supreme court meddling so much this would be least of their priorities.