VVS Laxman, Hrishikesh Kanitkar to be India's head coaches for Asian Games: Report

Former India batter and National Cricket Academy (NCA) head VVS Laxman will be head coach of the Indian men’s team for the Asian Games which will take place at Hangzhou in China from 23 September to 8 October. Hrishikesh Kanitkar will be the interim coach for the women’s national team for the continental event.

Apart from Laxman, former India leg-spinner Sairaj Bahutule will travel with the men’s team as the bowling coach and Munish Bali will be the fielding coach, the Times of India reported.

Laxman was also supposed to be the head coach for the India tour of Ireland after Rahul Dravid was given a rest but he was replaced by former Saurashtra captain Sitanshu Kotak as the Indian batting great was busy overseeing a camp for emerging players.

For the India’s women’s team, Rajib Dutta (bowling coach) and Subhadeep Ghosh (fielding coach) will be the support staff and assist Kanitkar.

Indian men’s team for the Asian Games will include a lot of new faces as the competition clashes with the World Cup which starts on 5 October.

Team India (Senior Men) squad for Asian Games: 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.

Team India (Senior Women) squad for Asian Games: 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