IPL: Royal Challengers Bangalore revamps its support staff

Kolkata : The Royal Challengers Bangalore, who are in the hope of a better upcoming Indian Premier League season and clinch the coveted trophy, have revamped their support staff by axing Gary Kirsten and Ashish Nehra and roping in Mike Hesson and Simon Katich into their team.

Hesson will be the director of Cricket Operations and Simon Katich will serve as the head coach of RCB.

Nehra, the former India pacer, and Kirsten, the former South African batsman and India's World Cup winning coach in 2011 had been appointed in 2018 after former New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori was removed as the head coach following the 2018 season.

Hesson has had his success as Kiwi's head coach and was also one of the six shortlisted candidates recently to become India's next head coach. However, he was second on that final list, falling short to Ravi Shastri, which was finalised by Kapil Dev-led CAC. Hesson has also served as the coach of Kings XI Punjab in the IPL 2019.

Meanwhile, Katich has gained massive experience while serving as the assistant coach for Kolkata Knight Riders' until the 2019 season.

“RCB’s purpose is to be the most trusted, respected and best performing T20 franchise and hence our constant endeavour is to create a culture of excellence and high performance for every member of the team. To deliver this ambition, we are very happy to announce the appointment of Mike Hesson and Simon Katich. We believe that Mike's extensive experience in building strong teams along with Simon's powerful cricket experience will help us create a winning culture,” said Sanjeev Churiwala, Chairman of Royal Challengers Bangalore.

“As a result of this restructuring exercise, we will be moving to a single coach model,” he concluded.