A seven-member committee headed by Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sharad Pawar was set up on Monday to choose India's new coach amid reports that Australians Dav Whatmore and Tom Moody are the front runners for the job.

Besides Pawar, the "Special Committee" will consist of three former captains -- Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and S Venkataraghavan -- as well as N Srinivasan and M P Pandove, the BCCI treasurer and joint secretary respectively. Board secretary Niranjan Shah will be the committee's convenor.

An official announcement from the BCCI said that Pawar had appointed the committee to advise the Board in the selection of a manager or coach for the team, which means that the successor to Greg Chappell, who resigned recently, could be given either designation.

The committee will meet at the earliest and convey its recommendations to the Board, the statement said.

Shastri, who has been appointed the manager for next month's tour of Bangladesh, is said to have told the Board that he would not be available for the job after this assignment.

Bangladesh's current coach Whatmore has publicly shown his interest in the job, which Chappell described as the "toughest cricket assignment in the world".

Moody, who has done an excellent job with the Sri Lankan team, is also said to be in the reckoning.

The three former captains were also in the panel which had selected Chappell as the coach in May 2005. Moody, Mohinder Amarnath and Desmond Haynes were the other candidates who had appeared for the interview in New Delhi.

Although no date has been fixed for the first meeting of the committee, a top source in the Board indicated that a meeting could be convened in the first week of May.

The source declined to comment on the possible candidates for the job but gave enough indications that the team could have another foreign coach.

"Shastri will not be available after the Bangladesh tour. We will shortlist a few names in the first meeting and then begin the process of selecting the new coach," the source said.

Chappell quit the job in a blaze of controversy following the Indian team's World Cup debacle, prompting the Board for a makeshift arrangement which saw Shastri taking over as the manager for the Bangladesh tour.

Apart from Shastri, the Board also appointed former Test paceman Venkatesh Prasad as bowling coach and another former player Robin Singh as the fielding coach for the tour starting on May 7.

Responding to the Board's diktat to pick a "young team" in the wake of the World Cup debacle, the national selectors dropped veterans Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly from the one day squad and dumped Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan and Ajit Agarkar from both the one day and Test teams.

The Indians are scheduled to play three one-dayers and two Test matches in Bangladesh.