By IANS
Chennai : Graham Ford, who earlier trained the South African team, was Saturday chosen to succeed Greg Chappell as the coach of the Indian cricket team.
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) treasurer Niranjan Shah announced that Ford's name had been recommended as the coach to the Working Committee which will meet later this month to finalise the arrangement.
Meanwhile, Ford has also sought time to end his contract with Kent County.
Ford's appointment, for a period of one year, is no wonder because he was the choice of Indian captain Rahul Dravid all along. Other team members – with the possible exception of Sachin Tendulkar who reportedly backed Englishman John Emburey – too endorsed Ford.
Ford and Emburey made hour-long presentations here in the evening to a panel of BCCI members including its president Sharad Pawar, Shah, treasurer N. Srinivasan and former captains Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and S. Venkataraghavan.
Gavaskar's arrival at the venue, the Park Sheraton Hotel in upmarket south Chennai, helped the two contenders shrug off their jetlag after a 10-hour flight Friday.
The two coaches currently serving different counties in England had pipped Australian Dav Whatmore to the post while the Indian team toured Bangladesh last month.
Long before the BCCI went into confabulations about the selection process, it was obvious that Ford's CV presented a win-win situation for him and the Indian team mainly because he hadn't burnt his bridges with his present employers – Kent County – unlike Whatmore who gave up his job in Bangladesh.
While Ford had excelled during his stints in South Africa and England, Emburey had a forgettable second innings in Northamptonshire and Middlesex.
Emburey had played 64 Tests, taking 147 wickets and scoring more than 1,700 runs at over 20.
Ford had never been capped and had managed only an average of 13.5 runs from seven first class matches. But he had managed to accord a powerful identity to the South African cricket team in the post-apartheid era, taking it to a World Cup semi-final.