The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has reportedly received 'fake' applications in the names of former cricketers MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar for the role of head coach of the senior men's team. The Indian team is in the hunt for a new coach after Rahul Dravid, whose tenure will draw curtains at the end of the T20 World Cup 2024 in the USA and West Indies.
As reported in the Indian Express, the Indian Board has received more than 3000 applications for the top role in the coaching staff, most of which are fake. The Board has received multiple applications in the names of former cricketers Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh among others. The fake applicants have also used the names of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The deadline to apply for the Indian head coach role was kept at 27th May 2024, a day after the IPL 2024 final. BCCI had invited applications via Google Forms. Notably, two years ago, the Board had to deal with fake applications too when it received nearly 5000 applications via mail.
"Last year too, the BCCI received such a response where imposters applied and the story is similar this time. The reason the BCCI had to invite applications on Google forms is it’s easy to scrutinise the names of applicants in one sheet," a BCCI official said as quoted by the English website.
The Board had kept an eligibility criteria for the interested applicants. The required Qualifications, Experience, Knowledge & Skills needed for this job were:
Should have played a minimum of 30 Test Matches or 50 ODI’s; or
Head Coach of a full member Test Playing Nation, for a minimum period of 2 years; or
Head Coach of an Associate member /IPL Team or Equivalent International League/First Class Teams/
National A teams, for a minimum period of 3 years; or
Should have BCCI Level 3 Certification or equivalent; and
Should be below 60 years of age.
