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Eric Simons, the bowling coach of India's cricket team, will be sacked at the end of the ongoing Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia, and will be replaced by Joe Dawes. This decision was taken at the BCCI's Working Committee meeting in Chennai on Monday, according to the Hindustan Times.
Simons, who joined the Indian team in January 2010, has been under fire since India's lacklustre bowling shows in England and Australia despite favourable conditions. He has also been criticised for his inability to get the best out of Ishant Sharma as well as the injury management of the bowlers.
Former Australian fast bowler Jeff Thomson had questioned Simons' credentials recently.
“I think India need a bowling coach to guide the young fast bowlers. You’ve got a bloke who hasn’t played a single Test. If you had someone like Dennis Lillee or Craig McDermott it would do a world of difference to bowlers," Thomson told Hindustan Times.
Simons, who is the head coach of Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League, took 33 wickets in the 23 one-day internationals he played for South Africa in 1994-95. In September 2002, the 49-year-old Simons was appointed as South Africa coach; he stepped down from the position in October 2004 amid a poor run of form for the team.
Dawes played 76 first-class matches for Queensland between 1997 and 2005, before his career was cut short by a knee injury. He was the bowling coach of South Australia in June 2011 and assumed the same role for the Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash League 2011-12.
Meanwhile, BCCI president N.Srinivasan on Monday said the board was ready to walk an extra mile to address the issues raised by Sahara India on the sponsorship deal but made it clear that exceptions cannot be made by bending rules in the Indian Premier League.
At the time of withdrawing their association with the BCCI, Sahara said it was denied natural justice and the last straw was the BCCI's refusal to allow Yuvraj Singh's price to be added to Pune Warriors' auction purse after the southpaw was ruled out of the tournament with a lung tumour.
Srinivasan said Pune Warriors could have a replacement for Yuvraj as per IPL rules. He, however, added the BCCI was against changing rules for the benefit a particular franchise owner.
The BCCI’s working committee also rejected the key recommendations of the Woolf report concerning the restructuring of the ICC.
“The working committee discussed all the main recommendations of the report submitted to the ICC by a committee headed by Lord Woolf. The committee was of the opinion that these recommendations were not acceptable and rejected it,” Srinivasan told reporters. “The working committee was in particular not agreeable to the changes in the structure of the management of the ICC that had been proposed,” he added.
The suggestions of the review are not binding on the ICC, which will examine it at the next board meeting in April.
The ICC’s independent governance review, headed by Lord Woolf, had called for sweeping changes in the administration of cricket and the functioning of its governing body.
India may have been whitewashed by England and Australia in the away Test series, but the working committee felt it wasn't an issue worthy enough to be discussed. “Frankly, nobody raised the 0-4 rout in Australia... It just wasn’t discussed,” a top source told The Telegraph.
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