Anil Kumble had stepped down as head coach after a public fallout with Virat Kohli in 2017.
Notably, Kumble had stepped down as head coach after a public fallout with Kohli following the Champions Trophy in 2017. Subsequently, it was reported in the media that the then captain Kohli and then head coach Kumble had differences but Rai clarified that there was nothing of that sort brought to his notice.
"This is not correct to say that there were differences between Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble. There were no differences between them. I have only written that when the time came to renew Anil Kumble's contract, we consulted the team and then Virat said that the junior members of the team feel intimidated by Anil Kumble because of his discipline. There was nothing like the difference between Kumble and Kohli. Neither I had any such information nor I have written," Vinod Rai told ANI.
The former CoA head further cited that the decision to appoint a coach was not his responsibility but it was the job of the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, and VVS Laxman.
"The board did try to convince Virat Kohli but the selection of coach is done by Cricket's Advisory Committee (CAC). The CAC comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman only selected Anil Kumble as coach earlier. I wrote this thing in the book when CAC was selecting the coach that you people should speak to the team and the coach because we were outsiders. If senior players like Sachin, Sourav and VVS speak to the players then the impact is different and if we speak, then it will not be that effective. So, these three spoke to the captain and the coach," he added.
Former CAG Vinod Rai was asked by the Supreme Court of India to take charge of the BCCI five years ago in the wake of the IPL corruption controversy.
"We never faced any sort of difficulty we only had one agenda that the game of cricket should go on and the mandate which was given by Supreme Court to convince state association and BCCI to adopt the new constitution," said Vinod Rai.
"Two big things we did on our tenure first we got complete transparency on the board where whatever decision we took we used to post it on the website. The minutes of the CoA meeting are still there on the website and any spending of more than 25 Lakh we used to put on the website. All the BCCI things became player's centric because earlier it never happened that after deciding their compensation package a player was consulted. We consulted the players in October 2017 we consulted them in December and decided their compensation package after consulting them," he explained.
According to Rai, the recent controversy involving BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and Virat Kohli should have been managed in a better way.
"I have shared my personal experience in this book during my tenure and after that, there is only one thing I have written in this book that BCCI President is a former India captain and a legend and a present captain and if you remember that time that team's mentor was MS Dhoni. So, whenever you change a team's captain then management, coach, mentor and Board President speak among themselves then the transition would have been smooth it has happened twice and if you remember when MS Dhoni handed over the captaincy then he consulted the Board President and when he handed over then both Virat and Dhoni were playing. So, the good thing was one senior player was a former captain and he was guiding the new captain. Dhoni has repeated the same thing in CSK. He handed over the captaincy while he was still playing and that is what should have happened," he said.
(With ANI inputs)