The Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) has parted ways with their head coach Daniel Vettori, as announced by the franchise on Thursday, in Bengaluru. RCB batting coach Gary Kirsten has got a promotion as he has now been appointed as coach and mentor, and the franchise will fill a few other coaching roles in upcoming weeks.
Talking about the same during a media interaction, RCB chairman, Sanjeev Churiwala said, “The parting was mutual. Vettori’s contract was up for renewal, and we wanted to bring in a different coaching perspective. After deliberations with the leadership team, we decided to move on.”
Describing it further, Churiwala explained that RCB will not have a head coach this time around, but rather a flat-structured “leadership coaching team that will work together”.
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the changes have been forced for the management as RCB performed terribly in the last two season of IPL. When asked if the team is over-dependent on skipper and star batsman Virat Kohli, Kirsten replied, “No team would want to put pressure on just one or two players. The reason why we play a team game is that everyone has to make a contribution during the course of the tournament. Your best players might make more contributions, but everyone has to do their share. You cannot win trophies by relying on one or two guys to do everything for you.”
The former Indian coach also revealed that he will be looking to make RCB a team which performs consistently. He said, “In many ways, we did not deserve to make it to the playoffs this year. We were not consistent through the season. It is always great to have a good start to the season, as this relieves the pressure. Overall, two losses cost us – one against CSK in Bengaluru and the SRH game, where we failed to chase 147. We lost matches which we should have won.”
Churiwala clarified that match-winning batsman A.B. de Villiers will continue with the franchise. De Villiers had retired from international cricket, just after finishing his stint for RCB in IPL 2018, adding that he will not play overseas.
