Former Indian player Sadagoppan Ramesh questioned legendary pacer Zaheer Khan’s appointment as Chennai Super Kings (CSK) head coach, considering his lack of coaching experience. However, CSK parted ways with longtime head coach Stephen Fleming during the ongoing IPL off-season as well. Despite reports speculating about many other names earlier, CSK finally appointed Zaheer as their next head coach on Monday, September 21.

Talking about this, Ramesh said on his Instagram handle: “Zaheer was a great cricketer and a fantastic bowler. But his only coaching experience has been working in the cricketing operations for MI from 2018 to 2022 and one year with LSG as mentor. However, this is the first time he’ll be the head coach of an IPL franchise. So we have to keep our fingers crossed.”

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Sadagoppan Ramesh also believes Ashish Nehra’s success as head coach of the Gujarat Titans (GT) tempted CSK to take a similar route with Zaheer Khan as well. Nehra has been GT’s head coach since their maiden season in 2022 and under him, GT has achieved tremendous success, winning the title in 2022 and finishing runner-up twice in 2023 and 2026 as well.

“Finally, CSK have an Indian head coach for the first time. They’ve finally gone from a foreign coach mentality to an Indian coach mentality. I feel CSK saw the success of Ashish Nehra with GT and wanted to try something similar with the appointment of Zaheer Khan to see if it can spark a turnaround,” concluded Ramesh.