Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) has appointed R Sridhar as assistant coach of the Afghanistan senior men’s team. He has previously served the Indian cricket team as their fielding coach.
Sridhar’s first assignment will be Afghanistan’s upcoming one-off Test match against New Zealand. Following this, he will also be part of the coaching setup for the three-match ODI series against South Africa. Notably, his contract could be extended based on his performance in the first two assignments.
Sridhar is a level-3 certified coach with a rich background in cricket, having previously served the India U-19 team as an assistant coach and as a spin bowling coach. From 2008 to 2014, he was an assistant fielding and spin bowling coach at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru.
The 54-year-old is a former player, who has represented Hyderabad in domestic cricket from the 1989/90 to 2000/01 seasons. He has accumulated a total of 574 runs in 35 First-Class matches and 69 runs in 15 List A matches. He has picked up 91 and 14 wickets in First-Class and List A formats, respectively. In addition, he transitioned to coaching in 2001.
“The Afghanistan Cricket Board named Indian Ramakrishnan Sridhar as Assistant Coach of the National Team for upcoming events of one-off test match against New Zealand and 3-match ODI series against South Africa.
“Sridhar is Level-3 certified coach who has served Indian U19 national team as Assistant Coach and Spin Bowling Coach too. From 2008 to 2014, Sridhar served India’s National Cricket Academy as an assistant fielding and spin bowling coach,” ACB said in a media release.
“It is worth mentioning that the Afghanistan Cricket Board has appointed Sridhar as the assistant coach for the one-off Test against New Zealand and the 3-match ODI series against South Africa. The Afghanistan Cricket Board wish Sridhar fills the role effectively and hope to have long term contract with him in the future,” the statement added.
He was the Indian U-19 team’s assistant coach during the 2014 U-19 World Cup in UAE. In August 2014, he was appointed as the fielding coach of the senior Indian men’s cricket team. He was later replaced by T Dilip when Rahul Dravid took up India’s head coach position in 2021. Sridhar has also served as fielding coach for Kings XI Punjab (now defunct) in the Indian Premier League. He also held head coaching roles with the Andhra cricket team and the Tripura Cricket Association. In 2023, he guided the California Knights to a third-place finish in the US Masters T10 competition.
