Former India batter and National Cricket Academy (NCA) chief VVS Laxman will travel to Hangzhou with the Ruturaj Gaikwad-led Team India as the head coach for the forthcoming Asian Games, starting September 28. At the same time, former Indian all-rounder Hrishikesh Kanitkar will be the interim head coach of the Indian women’s team at the Asiad.
According to Time of India, Laxman will be accompanied by Sairaj Bahutule as the bowling coach and Munish Bali as the fielding coach. The NCA chief is currently overseeing a high-performance conditioning camp of India’s emerging layers at Alur, Bengaluru.
For the women’s team, Rajib Dutta (bowling coach) and Subhadeep Ghosh (fielding coach) will be the other members of the support staff who will travel to China alongside Kanitakar. The former all-rounder was in charge of the Harmanpreet Kaur-led side in the Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa earlier this year.
The report further stated that the appointment of the Indian women’s team’s new head coach and support staff has been deferred till the beginning of the new international home season in December.
Cricket returns to Asian Games 2022
After getting snubbed in the 2018 edition of the Asiad, cricket is back for the third time in history and India will be sending their men’s team for the first time ever.
15 teams will be participating in the men’s category and nine in women’s as the game of cricket returns to the Asiad. The teams will be seeded based on their ICC ranking as of June 1, 2023. The action begins September 19 onwards with the women’s event. India will start directly in the quarterfinals as they are the highest-ranked Asian side in the shortest format of the game. The final will be played on September 26.
The men’s event begins September 28, with the final on October 7, a day before Rohit and Co. kick off their World Cup campaign against Australia.
India squads:
Men’s Team: Ruturaj Gaikwad (Captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rahul Tripathi, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Ravi Bishnoi, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Mukesh Kumar, Shivam Mavi, Shivam Dube, Prabhsimran Singh (wk).
Standby list of players: Yash Thakur, Sai Kishore, Venkatesh Iyer, Deepak Hooda, Sai Sudarsan.
Women’s Team: Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh (wk), Amanjot Kaur, Devika Vaidya, Anjali Sarvani, Titas Sadhu, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Minnu Mani, Kanika Ahuja, Uma Chetry (wk), Anusha Bareddy
Standby list of players: Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, Sneh Rana, Saika Ishaque, Pooja Vastrakar
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