What does this idea of a national coach-cum-manager mean? What job can Kapil do which his predecessors couldn't? Will he be able to motivate the team to levels hitherto unknown and transform Indian cricket's fortunes? The questions are many. To try and find the answers, one has go to back to the late '70s when cricket-playing nations, for the first time, got introduced to this idea.

It was only when Australia appointed Bobby Simpson to guide the fortunes of their team, ravaged by desertions to the `Packer circus', that the cricketing world saw the birth of a coach/professional manager, a term widely known and appreciated in the football world.

The amateur cricketers till then used to have the services of a manager, whose job was to look after the ``external''needs of the team: hotel accommodation, airline tickets etc. Unlike in football, the supremo here was the captain of the team.

Simpson brought with him a vast experience of his practical knowledge of the game and transformed a bunch of youngsters into world-beaters. The world was to take notice of this development and one by one other teams followed suit. As usual, India was the last one to wake up.

Till Bishan Singh Bedi was appointed the professional manager of the Indian team in 1990, the job of the manager was to give dinner speeches and sort out the team's off-the-field problems. Not that the manager had no role in formulating on-field strategy. It all depended on the cricketing ``stature'' of the man. If he was a well-known past cricketer/administrator, like a Hemu Adhikari, a Hanumant Singh or a Raj Singh Dungarpur, then he would play a significant role in devising a gameplan. But so short used to be the tenure managers were appointed on tour-by-tour basis that it would have little impact on thelong-term fortunes of the team.

For the ruling clique in the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the appointment of a managerand now even the coachcomes in handy to appease various pressure groups and ensure votes for its own survival. In such an environment, there was little possibility of the manager being given a longer tenure or enough powers to work out a long-term plan for the team's benefit.

Probably, to keep up with the changing face of world cricket, at least in pretense if not in intent, the Board finally appointed a ``professional manager'' in Bedi in 1989, with a callow Mohammed Azharuddin as the captain of the team.

This ``revolutionary'' step was doomed to failure right from Day One as Bedi was soon to realise he had ``no powers to initiate any effective action'' and in the first place there was no ``defined role which I was supposed to perform.'' He admits ``it was a mistake to take on a job without being specific as to what my role was going to be'' as his three-tour contract wasalmost similar in nature to the one players sign.

In the end, all one remembers of that period is the souring of relationship between Bedi and Azharuddin, though Bedi tried his best to instil a sense of discipline in the team and introduce a vigorous fitness regimen, much to the dislike of the players.

Whatever the impact of Bedi's tenure, at least a beginning had been made and what followed later has been a succession of coach-managersfrom Ajit Wadekar to Anshuman Gaekwadwho within the conservative framework tried their hand at improving the lot of the national team. That they all failed and had to go dissatisfied was not unexpected. Like Bedi had realised a decade earlier, unless one knows what role one is performing and has the powers to implement one's agenda, nothing significant can be achieved.

Given this backdrop, it did come as a surprise to find Kapil willing to take a plunge into a field where failure is associated with the very nature of the job. Not that Kapil is not aware of what this jobentails, and before accepting it he had done his homework well.

Kapil is probably also aware that the Indian Board, under severe criticism from all quarters for neglecting the development of the game, needed a high-profile man like him to shift the focus of the public from its own shortcomings.

Before taking up the job, he did talk about what needs to be done to improve the standard of the game in the country: improving domestic structure, the nature of the wickets and reducing the international calendar. He did see himself performing a much bigger role than what his predecessors had been assigned to do. And to implement his ``vision for the future'' he needed powers.

He felt a coach should be part of the selection committee and should have a say in formulating the international calendar. He also felt that the coach should be allowed to have a say in the way domestic cricket is being run and his views should not be ignored. In short, he needed an assurance from the Board that he would have enough``powers'' to implement his agenda. One of his conditionshe wanted a two-year tenurewas accepted. The rest were not, if one is to believe what the Board president said immediately after Kapil's appointment.

Maybe Kapil believes that his stature is such that even without his conditions being formally accepted, very few officials or even players will have the courage to go against him. Given the way the Indian Board functions, no one is sure what the actual situation is. But if the face-off between Kapil and the Board secretary, Jaywant Lele, on a trivial issue like calling players to bowl at the nets without the secretary's permission is anything to go by, then Kapil is already treading on thin ice, though three Test matches and a couple of one-day internationals is too short a time to even start making an assessment.

For Kapil's role to be meaningful, he will have to make an effort to introduce the changes he thinks are needed to improve the standard of the game even if it brings him into directconfrontation with the Board. Otherwise, it is very much probable, that all that will be left to say of his tenure as a coach would be the kind of rapport he developedor didn'twith Sachin Tendulkar!