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Former India batter Gautam Gambhir is on top of the BCCI’s wishlist to take up the position of India men’s head coach after Rahul Dravid’s term ends at the conclusion of the 2024 T20 World Cup in June.ESPNcricinfo has learned Gambhir, who is currently the mentor of Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, has been contacted by the BCCI to gauge his interest in the job, and further discussions are expected after KKR complete their IPL 2024 campaign. However, the deadline for applying for the India head coach job is May 27, a day after the IPL final.Dravid, it is learnt, has communicated to the BCCI his decision not to seek another tenure. VVS Laxman, who had been expected to succeed Dravid, had made himself unavailable last year due to personal reasons.While Gambhir, 42, has no experience of coaching at international or domestic level, he has been in charge of the coaching staff at two IPL franchises. He was the mentor at Lucknow Super Giants in IPL 2022 and 2023 – they qualified for the playoffs in both seasons – before joining KKR for the 2024 season, where they will finish the league stage on top of the points table. Gambhir’s move to KKR for IPL 2024 was unexpected but it is learned he was persuaded to become the team’s mentor by the franchise’s principal owner Shah Rukh Khan.Gambhir was part of India’s T20 World Cup triumph in 2007 and the ODI World Cup victory in 2011. He captained KKR for seven IPL seasons from 2011 to 2017, and they qualified for the playoffs five times and won two titles in 2012 and 2014 under his leadership. They also reached the final of the defunct Champions League T20 in 2014.Last week, the BCCI posted an advertisement seeking applications for the position of India men’s head coach. The job, the BCCI said, would be for all three formats for a duration of three and a half years starting from July 2024 until December 2027.Dravid had begun his two-year term as India’s head coach after the 2021 T20 World Cup. His stint was supposed to end after the 2023 ODI World Cup in November last year, but he agreed to an extension until the end of the 2024 T20 World Cup, which will be played in West Indies and the USA in June.

After suffering their fourth consecutive defeat, against Punjab Kings in Guwahati, Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson has admitted his team is “going through failures” that need to be rectified at the earliest.Royals set the pace early in the tournament by winning eight of their first nine matches, but had lost three on the bounce coming in to Wednesday’s game. While Samson had insisted after the loss against Chennai Super Kings on Sunday that Royals were still playing “decent cricket” and “following the process”, he was more blunt in his assessment after the five-wicket defeat to Kings.”To be honest, we have to sit back and accept that we’re going through some failures,” Samson said. “When you lose four in a row, you have to find out what’s not working well in the team. When you are getting to the business end of the season, you need someone to raise their finger up and say, ‘I am going to win the game for the team’.”Yes, this is a team sport, but we have a lot of match-winners in the side, and we need individuals to step up. So it’s about having the right characters who can play with passion, and singlehandedly win the game for us. If all of us try that, and even a couple [of players] manage to step up, it would make a difference. We need those characters who can carry us.”Royals were playing their first home game at Guwahati this season and chose to bat on a wicket pitch that “wasn’t very high-scoring,” according to Samson. They scored only 144 for 9, which Samson said was at least 20-30 runs fewer than he’d have liked.”We were expecting a better wicket, if I’m being honest. I don’t think it’s a 140 wicket, but maybe 160 or 170 with the power and batting we have.”We’re not used to playing in these kind of wickets in this season when teams have been scoring 200 or 220. We had to play smart cricket and focus on the basics and build momentum, trying to get boundaries here and there.”Royals had also struggled batting first on a slow pitch in Chennai, where they had been restricted to 141 for 5 after winning the toss and choosing to bat.While Royals qualified for the playoffs after Lucknow Super Giants lost to Delhi Capitals on Tuesday – a development that came as a “relief” to Samson – their defeat against the Kings has left their current No. 2 spot vulnerable to both Sunrisers Hyderabad and Chennai Super Kings. Those teams could also draw level with Royals on 16 points and overtake them on net run rate.Royals’ last league game is against the table toppers Kolkata Knight Riders in Guwahati on Sunday.

Match detailsRajasthan Royals vs Punjab KingsGuwahati, 7.30pm IST (2pm GMT)Big picture: Who will replace Buttler for RR? From being fairly well-placed to top the points table, Rajasthan Royals now run the risk of slipping out of the top two after suffering three successive defeats at the pointy end of the tournament. Lucknow Super Giants’ loss to Delhi Capitals means Royals are already through to the playoffs, but they need to win one or two matches to confirm a top-two finish in the league phase.Who should replace Buttler at the top for RR?9.1K

South Africa’s all-format women’s tour of India will begin with a three-match ODI series, then move to the one-off Test, and end with the three T20Is. The ODIs, as well as a one-day warm-up game for the visiting side against a Board President’s XI side, will be played in Bengaluru, while the rest of the games will take place in Chennai.As reported by ESPNcricinfo earlier, the sequence – the T20Is being played at the end – is with a view to ensure continuity in formats ahead of the T20 World Cup, to be held in Bangladesh in September-October.After the warm-up game on June 13, the ODIs will be played on June 16, 19 and 23; the Test will run from June 28 to July 1; the T20Is will be played on July 5, 7 and 9.The one-off Test wasn’t part of the ICC’s FTP originally. It was added since BCCI and CSA have both been trying to promote women’s Tests of late. This will be India’s third Test in seven months, having played against England and Australia in December last year, both at home.South Africa, meanwhile, ended their eight-year hiatus from the format in England in June 2022 and subsequently played Australia in February in Perth.More recently, the BCCI also reintroduced a red-ball tournament in the women’s domestic calendar, hosting an inter-zonal competition – of five matches in total. The last time the BCCI had a red-ball tournament for its women cricketers was back in 2018.

India will play the second semi-final of the men’s T20 World Cup on June 27 in Providence, Guyana, if they qualify for the knockouts stage. The ICC’s playing conditions for the tournament, accessed by ESPNcricinfo, confirms this.India have likely been allotted the Guyana semi-final because of the match timings.The first semi-final in Tarouba, Trinidad, is a night game, set to be played from 8.30pm local time on June 26 – which in India is 6am on June 27. The Guyana semi-final, however, will start at 10.30am local time, which is a far more TV-friendly 8pm in India.The final in Bridgetown, Barbados, is also a day game, starting 10am local time on June 29, or 7.30pm in India.The playing conditions have also confirmed that there will be no reserve day for the second semi-final. Instead, there will be 250 minutes of extra time allotted to the match – rather than the 190 minutes allotted to the first semi-final and the final, which have reserve days – to try and ensure a finish in case there are weather interruptions.This additional hour of extra time has been added on because the tournament schedule allows no time for a reserve day, with only a one-day gap between the second semi-final and the final.The second semi-final could be in for a tight squeeze in case of persistent rain, particularly because in semi-finals and finals at ICC events, a decisive result can only be achieved if both teams have batted for at least ten overs each.In most T20 games, the team batting second only has to bat for five overs for a result to be achieved in shortened games, and this remains the case for the majority of games at the T20 World Cup, except the three knock-out games. This was also the case for the semi-finals and final of the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.

The Impact Player rule in the IPL has not gone down too well with some current players and coaches, but former India coach Ravi Shastri is in favour of it, saying it has contributed to a number of thrilling finishes.”The Impact Player [rule] is good. You have to evolve with the times,” Shastri told R Ashwin on his Youtube channel. “You know, it happens in other sports as well. It’s got tighter finishes. You have to evolve with the times and I think it’s a good rule. You saw the number of tight finishes we had in last year’s IPL. So, you know, it has made a big difference.”While some – like India captain Rohit Sharma – feel that the rule is detrimental to the development of allrounders, Ashwin cited the example of Dhruv Jurel, who began his IPL career as an Impact Player in IPL 2023 and went onto make his Test debut for India within a year.”You know when any new rule comes in, there will be…people will try and justify why that’s not right,” Shastri said. “But in time when you see the scores – 200 and 190 – and then like you mentioned individuals grabbing that opportunity and making the most of it, people will start re-looking at how they think about it.”Jay Shah, the BCCI secretary, said last week that the Impact Player rule is “not permanent” and that a call on its use in subsequent editions of the IPL will be taken after a discussion with stakeholders after the 2024 T20 World Cup.”Impact Player is like a test case. We have implemented it slowly. The biggest advantage of it is that two Indian players are getting a chance [in each game], which is the most important,” Shah had told reporters at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on Thursday. “We will consult with the players, franchises, broadcasters [and take a call]. This is not permanent [but] I am not saying that it will go.”[We’ll see] if it’s making the game more competitive or not. Even then, if a player feels that this is not right, then we will talk to them. But no one has told us anything yet, so it will be decided after the World Cup.”Rohit was the first high-profile Indian player to criticise the rule, which came into the IPL in 2023 after being trialled in the domestic Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament, allowing teams to bring in a 12th player at any point in a match to replace a player from the original XI announced at the toss.Among others to speak out against the rule were Axar Patel and Mukesh Kumar of Delhi Capitals (DC).DC head coach Ricky Ponting, however, had said he was happy for the IPL to retain the Impact Player if it was making the tournament a “better spectacle”. But from his perspective as a coach, he admitted he wasn’t too keen on the rule, calling it a “nightmare”.

Match abandoned without a ball bowled Gujarat TItans vs Kolkata Knight RidersA combination of lightning and rain forced the first abandoned game of IPL 2024 in Ahmedabad on Monday, and in the process confirmed two things: Kolkata Knight Riders’ top-two finish in the league stage and Gujarat Titans’ elimination from playoff contention.Only a win could’ve kept eighth-placed GT in the hunt, but rain did not even allow for a toss. Such was the storm’s intensity that some floodlights were also affected; banners in the stadium that got torn earlier ended up wrapping the floodlights in such a way that they needed to be manually removed.GT’s task was uphill anyway. With the season’s lowest net run-rate of -1.063, they were only mathematically alive as even two big wins in their last two games could’ve still left them short. KKR were almost assured of a top-two finish courtesy their dominating net run-rate of 1.428 after 12 games, but a 19th point in their tally sealed that.This is the first time that GT have not qualified for the IPL playoffs since they joined the competition before the 2022 season. They have a consolation game against Sunrisers Hyderabad next on May 16.Monday’s game could’ve given KKR a chance to ease Rahmanullah Gurbaz, the wicketkeeper-batter, into the XI. Gurbaz is the likely replacement in their XI once Phil Salt leaves to join his national team camp.For KKR, their next aim is to finish the league stage at No. 1, something they have never achieved before. If they beat Rajasthan Royals in their last league game on Sunday, they are assured of that. They would also be assured of No. 1 if RR fail to collect two wins in their last two matches, which includes the KKR fixture.Even if KKR do not finish first, they wouldn’t mind it much. The only two times they finished second on the IPL points table (2012 and 2014), they ended up as IPL champions.

The BCCI has invited applications* for the successor to a Rahul Dravid in the position of head coach of the India men’s senior national team. Applications must “be submitted by 6pm IST on May 27, 2024,” the BCCI said in a statement on Monday. That’s the day after the final of IPL 2024. The new coach will be appointed on a three-and-a-half-year term, from July 1, 2024 to December 31, 2027.Last year, the BCCI had made the mistake of inviting applications for the head coach only after the incumbent coach’s tenure had ended. With not enough time left for the next big assignment, the outgoing coach, Dravid, was convinced to take an extension until the T20 World Cup this June.This time, applications have been invited even before the team leaves for the T20 World Cup. Should Dravid want to continue, he will have to re-apply. The rest of the backroom staff will be appointed in consultation with the new head coach. Jay Shah, the BCCI secretary, said recently that it was unlikely India will split the coaching role based on formats.”We are looking for a long-term coach for three years,” Shah had said last week. “There is no precedent of different coaches for different formats in Indian cricket. Besides, we have a number of all-format players. Ultimately, it will be the Cricket Advisory Committee’s (CAC) call. I have to implement what they decide.”The CAC will also decide on a new national selector for which the BCCI had already advertised in January this year. This selector is likely to replace Salil Ankola, who is the second member of the selection committee from the west zone. The new member is likely to be from the north zone. “A few interviews for the selector’s post have already happened,” Shah said. “The CAC will meet in a week’s time to finalise the name, and we will announce it soon.”Players from teams knocked out of IPL 2024 to leave earlyShah also confirmed that the Indian team will leave for the T20 World Cup to the USA and the West Indies in two batches. Those players whose teams don’t qualify for the IPL playoffs will leave on May 24 along with the coaching staff. The rest of the squad will leave after the IPL final on May 26. India’s first match is on June 5, against Ireland.Shah ruled out resting players whose teams have no chance of making it to the playoffs for the remaining games of the league stage. He said the IPL was a great opportunity for them to sharpen their T20 skills. “Look at how well Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma played the other day,” Shah said. “If [Jasprit] Bumrah gets to bowl to Head, what better opportunity is there to practise?”Mayank Yadav to get fast bowlers’ contractMayank Yadav impressed with high speeds in his maiden IPL stint•BCCILucknow Super Giants fast bowler Mayank Yadav, who is injury-prone and is likely ruled out of IPL 2024, will be under BCCI supervision after Shah confirmed he has been awarded the newly-constituted fast bowlers’ central contract. He joins other promising fast bowlers who don’t have an annual retainer: Akash Deep, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Umran Malik, Yash Dayal and Vidwath Kaverappa. These bowlers will be monitored by the NCA medical staff all year around except for during the IPL.WTC final to move out of England?While acknowledging the challenge for finding another window for it or finding another venue that can host it during June, Shah did indicate that the BCCI has spoken to the ICC about new venues for the World Test Championship (WTC) final. The first two finals were played in England where India lost. The third WTC final will also be played in England in June 2025. “We have spoken to the ICC about it,” Shah said, “They will consider changing the venue.”This article was updated at 6.05pm GMT on May 13, 2024 after the BCCI issued a statement

The 2024-25 Indian domestic season is set for an overhaul with the BCCI keen on staging the Ranji Trophy across two phases to minimize weather-related disruptions, particularly in northern India. As per the proposal that will be reviewed by the BCCI’s apex council, the Ranji season could begin in late September or early October.The first five rounds of matches will be followed by the senior men’s white-ball tournaments – the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (T20) and the Vijay Hazare Trophy (50 overs). The remainder of the Ranji season, which will include three rounds of group fixtures and the knockouts, will be staged immediately afterwards.In 2023-24, the Ranji Trophy began in early January, with several matches during the first half of the competition severely affected by bad weather. Disruptions due to fog also caused logistical nightmares for a number of teams, leading a number of captains and coaches to voice their concerns publicly.The board has also proposed increasing the gap between matches from three days to four, especially during the first-class tournaments. A number of players, Shardul Thakur most notably, had spoken of the need for bigger breaks between matches to facilitate better recovery and preparation for players keeping in mind the length of the competition.Mumbai, for example, played 10 first-class matches in under 10 weeks during their run to the 2023-24 Ranji title. “If boys keep playing like this for two more seasons, there will be a lot of injuries across the country,” Shardul had said. “Next year, they [the BCCI] have to re-look at it and give more breaks. When I remember playing Ranji Trophy back in the day, [a] good seven to eight years back, the first three games used to have a three-day break, and then it was a four-day break, and knockouts were played with five-day breaks.”There has also been a lot of conjecture around the BCCI looking to further increase the match fees of domestic players, as a follow-up to its increase of match fees for contracted Test cricketers.However, ESPNcricinfo understands there are no immediate plans in the pipeline, even though discussions around the possibility of central contracts at the state level are ongoing. In March, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) agreed to incentivise its senior men’s team with a 100% pay raise from the 2024-25 season.

The Impact Player rule, one of the hot topics of debate during IPL 2024, is not “permanent”, BCCI secretary Jay Shah has said, and a call on its use in subsequent editions of the IPL will be taken after a discussion with stakeholders after the 2024 T20 World Cup.”Impact Player is like a test case. We have implemented it slowly. The biggest advantage of it is that two Indian players are getting a chance [in each game], which is the most important,” Shah told reporters at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on Thursday. “We will consult with the players, franchises, broadcasters [and take a call]. This is not permanent [but] I am not saying that it will go.”[We’ll see] if it’s making the game more competitive or not. Even then, if a player feels that this is not right, then we will talk to them. But no one has told us anything yet, so it will be decided after the World Cup.”The Impact Player rule has been cited as one of the key reasons for the massive scores recorded in IPL 2024. Rohit Sharma, for one, has said that the rule has been hampering the growth of allrounders in the country. He was the first high-profile Indian player to criticise the rule, which came into the IPL in 2023 after being trialled in the domestic Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament, allowing teams to bring in a 12th player at any point in a match to replace a player from the original XI announced at the toss.Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batting coach Mike Hussey had said that the rule had made IPL games “fun” to watch, but admitted that it was “scary” from a bowler’s point of view, with the rule allowing batting orders to be lengthened.”Whoever is making the rules, they are thinking that everything will work as per the batters’ convenience,” Axar had said. “Obviously, it has been difficult [for the bowlers]. Because of the Impact Sub rule, everyone gets one more batsman so they think that they will use the batsman in case the batting unit doesn’t go well. And whosoever comes to play, they don’t take much time and start [hitting] from the first ball because they know that they have a player in seventh or eighth place.”That is why I am not a big fan of the rule, because as an allrounder, I know that they will either take a proper batsman or a bowler, not an allrounder.””The Impact Player rule changes things a fair bit,” Starc, who has conceded runs at 11.37 so far, had said. “Everyone gets to bat a lot deeper having a batting and a bowling XI. There’s a lot made of that rule throughout the tournament and there’s been a lot of high scores, which is the nature of the wickets and the grounds we play on here. When you have batters and batting allrounders come in at Nos. 8 or 9, it’s a long batting line-up.”Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting, however, had said he was happy for the IPL to retain the Impact Player if it was making the tournament a “better spectacle”. But from his perspective as a coach, he admitted he wasn’t too keen on the rule, calling it a “nightmare”.The Impact Player rule has also been used in the ILT20 and the Abu Dhabi T10. In response to reports about the rule’s potential introduction at the SA20, league commissioner Graeme Smith said on Friday: “Nothing has been discussed and all is on the table for our cricket committee meeting pre season 3.”