Gary Kirsten has farewelled coach of India position and he is off to Capetown, SA to be with his young family. Some time later when he returns to mainstream coaching, he shall more likely than not take up job with SA and he gave a lot of feelers for the same when he departed today.
He has been a major factor responsible for the turnaround India has shown in past 4 years. He gave his everything, worked on every player, worked on strengths of players, gave them confidence, backed them up and what not. Thats why today we find players like Raina, Kohli, Zaheer and others a touch above than they were in the previous regime. He remained a backroom guy and did his stuff wonderfully well but quietly.
The results are for everyone to see. The respect he has got from every one, his contemporaries in Test side, his young lads in the ODIs and everyone have just good words for him. VVS Laxman, Kumble, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid have played against SA side of which Gary has been the part of. Even add Harbhajan, Zaheer, Nehra, Yuvraj in it. All this players have publicly spoken high about the man.
He is definetely going to be missed and he is going to make the job of BCCI very difficult to find an able and worthy replacement for him before the West Indies tour and I just hope they can avoid the Graham Ford episode and they are able to find somebody who shall accept the position. But 2007 is different from 2011. Then we were first round crashers, today we are world champions.
