Gary Kirsten

Calcutta: Exactly a day after a not-too-amused chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar told The Telegraph that Team India coach Gary Kirsten’s views on the Test captaincy were entirely “personal,” the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has ticked off the South African.

Specifically, BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah has asked Kirsten not to exceed his brief and speak on issues which are exclusively in the selectors’ domain.

More importantly, perhaps, the BCCI wouldn’t like strained relations within the dressing room — even if nobody says anything publicly.

“The media may give its opinion on who should or shouldn’t be the Test captain, but that can’t be done by any official… You can well understand what will happen if people in authority start airing their views,” Shah said, when contacted in Rajkot on Thursday evening.

He added: “I haven’t spoken to Kirsten, nor have I sent him an email… He’ll get the message through the media… People understand… May be, he didn’t intend saying what he did, but why give anybody the chance to interpret the comments in a particular manner?”

Shah replied in the negative when asked whether either Test captain Anil Kumble or Vengsarkar had conveyed their unhappiness to him.

The seeds of a controversy were sown the other day when Kirsten told a TV channel that ODI and Twenty20 captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was “ready” to lead in Test cricket as well.

Kumble (the senior-most pro after Sachin Tendulkar) has been in that seat from last November and, despite being close to his 38th birthday, hasn’t indicated he wants to call it a day.

Indeed, why should he?

An agency report, in fact, quoted Shah as saying: “Anil is a great cricketer and knows when he should bow out or give up the captaincy… Right now, he’s bowling very well and the selectors won’t change the captain or drop him…”

Team India’s next engagement is the home series, featuring four Tests, against Australia. That begins next month and the captain will be chosen by the selection committee to be constituted at the BCCI’s AGM on September 27-28.

The term of Vengsarkar and his colleagues ends with the AGM. It will also mark the end of selectors working in an honorary capacity.