Kieron Pollard says four years of coaching have made him a better batter. He retired from the IPL in November 2022 to become Mumbai Indians’ batting coach. He now calls his batting since then “phenomenal”.
He said it on The Champions Corner, Dwayne Bravo’s podcast, in an episode released on October 18, 2026. The guest was Otis Gibson, Trinbago Knight Riders’ head coach. Pollard also coaches MI London in the Hundred, and he still plays for TKR.
The obvious reading is that coaching kept him close to the game. The bigger edge is that coaching shows him the bowler’s plan before he walks out to bat.
Gibson set it up. He stopped playing around 2000, did his coaching badges and came back to county cricket in 2004. Over the next four years, he said, he took nearly 250 first-class wickets.
Pollard said Gibson’s story matched his own:
“What you’re saying there sort of resonated with myself as well, because I would have stepped on to that part of the field four years ago when I stopped playing the IPL. When I look at my statistics four years later, while I’m still in the field, what I’ve done from a batting perspective since then to now, it’s phenomenal.”
Kieron Pollard, The Champions Corner podcast, October 18, 2026
He said the gain came from having to teach:
“It has helped you as an individual first, as a cricketer, and help you understand from a coaching perspective how you have to go about things, how you have to explain things, how you have to do things. So I’m sort of a living testimony to exactly what you’re saying.”
Kieron Pollard, The Champions Corner podcast, October 18, 2026
Insider Read
A batting coach’s main job before a game is to predict how the other side will bowl at his batters. He works out the length to the big hitter at the death, where the boundary riders stand, and when the slower ball is coming. Pollard has done that work for Mumbai Indians’ finishers for four seasons, and they bat in the same spot he does.
So when he walks out at No. 6, the bowler’s plan holds no surprises for him. He has drawn up that same plan from the other side many times. A finisher who knows the field and the length before the ball is bowled is not reacting. He is waiting for the ball he expected, and that is why the game slows down for him.
Pollard’s Numbers Since Leaving the IPL
| Year | What he did |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Won the MLC title with MI New York |
| 2024 | Won the ILT20 title with MI Emirates |
| 2025 | Won MLC again. Won the CPL with TKR: 383 runs at 55, strike rate 174, 36 sixes |
| June 2026 | Scored 100* for MI New York vs Washington Freedom to pass Chris Gayle’s 14,562 runs and become T20’s leading run-scorer |
| August 2026 | Scored 65 off 26 balls vs Saint Lucia Kings to take the record back from Jos Buttler |
The hundred came in MLC 2026. It was only his second T20 century, and his first since CPL 2018.
He was 39 when he made it, and he has never opened the batting in a T20 match.
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