India will travel to Ireland to play three T20Is between August 18-23. Along with several senior players, the main coach staff including head coach Rahul Dravid, batting coach Vikram Rathour, and bowling coach Paras Mhambrey have been rested for the tour with an eye on the packed schedule coming up in the form of the Asia Cup, the ODI series against Australia, and the World Cup.

The Ireland tour marks the return of Jasprit Bumrah to top-flight cricket after a long time. He will be leading the Indian team in the absence of regular white-ball leaders Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya.

VVS Laxman, the current head of the National Cricket Academy (NCA), was originally supposed to travel with the Indian team as the head coach for the tour, but a change of plans means he will now stay back and oversee the Emerging camp in the NCA.

Who is Sitanshu Kotak?

Kotak, who has been the head coach for India A for more than two years now, is the head coach for the Ireland tour. He was, in fact, part of India’s coaching setup in their previous tour of Ireland as well, when Dravid & Co were rested. Laxman performed head coach duties then, with Kotak serving as the batting coach.

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Kotak was a prolific run-scorer in domestic cricket for Saurashtra, having scored a shade more than eight thousand runs from 130 first-class matches at an average of 41.76. He scored a total of 18 centuries in his domestic career, 15 of which came in first-class cricket, and three in List A. To go with that, he was also a handy bowler, having taken 70 first-class and 54 List A wickets. Kotak last played domestic cricket in 2013.

He switched over from playing to coaching immediately after his retirement and has served as the head coach for Saurashtra in domestic cricket for several years, including in the 2018-19 season where they finished as the runners-up. He was also the assistant coach for Gujarat Lions in the IPL and after Dravid’s tenure began as the NCA Head in 2019, Kotak took over as the head coach for India A.

Coming with a lot of top-level coaching experience behind him, Kotak has an important role to play in easing Bumrah back into the international setup in the Ireland series and making his job of handling a young squad easier.

You can check out India’s squad for the Ireland series here.