Former West Indies head coach joins KKR’s support staff ahead of IPL 2025 season
The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have appointed former West Indies head coach Ottis Gibson as their new assistant coach ahead of the IPL 2025 season. The 55-year-old has worked with the national team from 2010 to 2014. During his stint, WI won the 2012 T20 World Cup trophy in Sri Lanka. He also served as the bowling coach for England from 2007 to 2010 and again from 2015-17.
Apart from West Indies and England, he has also served as the head coach of the Proteas team from 2017-19 and has held coaching positions in several T20 franchises.
A former pacer from Barbados, Ottis has represented West Indies in ODIs and Tests from 1995-1990 before taking up a coaching career. He bagged more than 650 scalps in his first-class career.
At the Knight Riders, Ottis will now work with head coach Chandrakant Pandit, Bharat Arun (bowling coach), Carl Crowe (spin-bowling coach), among others.
KKR appoint Ajinkya Rahane as captain ahead of IPL 2025 season
Defending champions KKR have appointed Ajinkya Rahane as skipper for the upcoming IPL 2025 season. All-rounder Venkatesh Iyer will serve as his deputy.
As a skipper, Rahane has won nine out of 25 games during his stints with the now-defunct Rising Pune Supergiants and the Rajasthan Royals (RR). He has not led any IPL side since 2019.
The right-handed batter, however, was impressive with the bat during his stint with the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in 2023 and 2024, amassing 568 runs in 23 innings at a strike rate of 147.53.
He also looked exceptional with the bat, emerging as the leading run-scorer in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament, amassing 469 runs in eight innings at a strike rate of 164.56, including five half-centuries.
The reigning champions KKR will begin their IPL 2025 campaign against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the season opener at Eden Gardens on March 22.
KKR squd for IPL 2025: Rinku Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Harshit Rana, Ramandeep Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Quinton de Kock, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Anrich Nortje, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Spencer Johnson, Luvnith Sisodia, Ajinkya Rahane, Anukul Roy, Moeen Ali, and Umran Malik.