Vinod Rai, Chairman of the Committee of Administrators, has revealed that the panel approached Rahul Dravid for the post of the head coach of the Indian men’s cricket team but the former batsman turned down the offer to give preference to his family.

After Anil Kumble’s tenure as coach of the Indian team came to a tumultuous ending in 2017, following his fallout with captain Virat Kohli, Rai revealed the CoA wished for Dravid to take up the post, but the former batsman, who was already serving as coach of the India A and Under-19 teams, decided otherwise.

“Rahul was very upfront with us,” Rai told SportsKeeda. He said, ‘look I have two boys growing up at home and I have been travelling with the Indian team all over the world and I am not able to give time and attention to them, I think I must stay at home also. And give time to my family.’ I think that was a very fair request and though he would have been uppermost in mind. So, he was very much in the zone of consideration.”

Rai further revealed that Dravid was keen to continue working with the India A and Under-19 teams as he’d been delivering wonderful results with them. With Dravid out of contention and Kumble’s tenure ending abruptly, the post of the head coach eventually went to Ravi Shastri. However, Rai feels the end result was a win-win situation for everyone since CoA believed all three would have been good options as India’s head coach.

“Look, in terms of potential for coaching, Dravid, Shastri and Kumble are the best in the business,” Rai said. “We definitely talked to Rahul. He was engaged with the Under-19 team and he was involved with them. He had developed a road map on how to develop a team. He was bringing out fantastic results. He wanted to continue because he felt that there were some unfinished tasks with that team and he wanted to do it.”

Dravid was last year appointed the National Cricket Academy chief and Rai revealed the former India batsman was more than happy to accept the role. “Dravid is a head coach at NCA. He was very kind and very gracious in accepting that and committing himself to the NCA,” he said.