Former India fast bowler Venkatesh Prasad has followed former Indian opener Virender Sehwag’s footsteps as he has also stepped down from his position from the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Kings XI Punjab (KXIP). Prasad was the team’s bowling coach for one season. He will be replaced by another former cricketer Sridharan Sriram, who was the assistant coach at the Delhi Daredevils (DD), and the spin bowling coach of Australia.

Kings XI had recently replaced Brad Hodge with Mike Hesson as their head coach. Hesson was the head coach of the New Zealand cricket team. The Mohali-based team has also roped in Prasanna Agoram, the Technical Strategy Analyst at Cricket South Africa (CSA), as their high-performance coach. Agoram played a crucial role in South Africa’s transition to becoming one of the toughest teams to beat in international cricket.

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Some great players like Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn have all credited the Indian as the brain behind the Proteas’ successful run.

Under the leadership of the veteran Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, KXIP had a brilliant start to the tournament in 2018 as they registered five wins in their first seven matches. However, they couldn’t manage to replicate the same performance in the later stage of the tournament and lost six out of the next seven to crash out of the tournament from the league stage.

Kings XI need to get a reliable batsman or two to slot in the middle order and a hard-hitting all-rounder, who can provide the finishing touches. The finds for them in the last season were Andrew Tye who snapped the purple cap with 24 wickets and Mujeeb Ur Rahman, the Afghanistan off-spinner.