Hrishikesh Kanitkar, 48, has been alleviated to the post of India senior women’s team batting coach, mere two months ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup, scheduled to take place in South Africa.
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Kanitkar was recently seen with the India men’s Cricket side which toured New Zealand for the White Ball series, where he had been assisting VVS Laxman, who was appointed as the team’s head coach in the absence of Rahul Dravid.
Also, Kanitkar is a regular name in the BCCI’s coaching department, having not only travelled with the India ‘A’ side in the past, but has also been with the senior men’s team in the capacity of batting coach whenever the national team’s coaching staff is rested ahead of a series.
He is presently with the Indian senior women’s team, which will play a five-match home T20I series against Australia, beginning December 9 in Mumbai.
Who is Hrishikesh Kanitkar
A left-handed middle order batter, Hrishikesh Kanitkar had played 34 ODIs and two Test matches for the India team from 1997-2000.
Having not managed to impress the team think-tank with the limited opportunities that he had earned, Kanitkar retired in the year 2015, but not before playing First-Class (FC) matches for the domestic sides in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra for another ten years.
He scored 10,400 runs in FC Cricket across 146 matches at a sublime average of 52.26, and skippered Rajasthan to two back-to-back Ranji Trophy titles during 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons.
Interestingly, apart from these two titles under Kanitkar as captain, Rajasthan had never won a Ranji Trophy title in history, despite having made it through to the final on eight other occasions.
Has Ramesh Powar resigned as Indian women’s team head coach?
The BCCI, on the other hand, has removed Ramesh Powar from the position of its senior women’s team head coach. As part of a reshuffle, Powar has been now assigned as the spin bowling coach at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), under VVS Laxman as its head.
Apart from his role as the head coach, Powar used to also oversee women’s Cricket across the different age-groups. Thus, with him being removed from the post on Tuesday, the Indian women’s Cricket is now without any coach or in-charge with the inaugural ICC Under-19 Women’s World Cup also scheduled to commence next month.
As per sources, the women’s national team will play the 2023 T20 World Cup without a head coach, although the BCCI has not come up with any reasoning pertaining the need to come up with sudden decisions as such.
