Ryan ten Doeschate has stepped down as India’s men’s assistant coach following the white-ball tour of England. ESPNcricinfo reports he will return to Kolkata Knight Riders in a coaching role.
Ryan ten Doeschate has stepped down as India’s men’s assistant coach following the white-ball tour of England
Cricinfo understands he will return to KKR in a coaching role pic.twitter.com/s2a5cgNdyc
— Cricinfo (@cricinfo) July 28, 2026
The former Netherlands international’s two-year contract with the BCCI concluded after the third ODI at Lord’s on July 19. He had communicated his desire to leave the setup well before the tour ended, and the board has now accepted his request.
Ten Doeschate was appointed alongside Abhishek Nayar in July 2024, when Gautam Gambhir took over as India head coach. Both had been part of KKR’s coaching staff during their IPL 2024 title-winning campaign. Gambhir personally recommended both for the national setup, and at the time called ten Doeschate the person he trusted most in cricket.
“Someone I can take a bullet for, someone who I can trust for life.”
Gautam Gambhir, KKR jersey launch event, IPL 2024
The departure was driven by multiple factors. Ten Doeschate’s family is based in London. With three young sons and a working spouse, the year-round travel demands of international cricket became unsustainable. He had been looking for a coaching role with a shorter, more concentrated schedule, and the IPL’s two-month window fits that requirement.
But the personal reasons were not the only factor. When ten Doeschate joined the India setup, he was promised the role of fielding coach. That promise was never fulfilled. T Dilip, who had held the fielding coach position since the Rahul Dravid era, received a contract extension after the 2025 Champions Trophy following a recommendation from a senior player. The dynamics of how Dravid’s coaching methods shaped the previous setup made the transition under Gambhir even harder, as legacy staff stayed on while new appointments struggled for defined roles. Ten Doeschate was left without a clearly defined domain in the coaching staff.
“You have Kotak as the batting coach and there’s Gauti himself to look after the batters. Morne is in charge of pacers and Sairaj looks after the spinners. When Tendo was brought on board, he was promised fielding coach’s job. Dilip was supposed to be removed along with Abhishek Nayar, Soham Desai and Arun Kanade after the 2025 Champions Trophy. However for Dilip, a strong recommendation came from a senior player and Dilip got a one year extension and Tendo actually didn’t have any specific domain role. He is a fantastic coach, who hasn’t been used because Dilip is there.”
Senior BCCI source, PTI, July 15, 2026
With Sitanshu Kotak handling batting, Morne Morkel overseeing pace, Sairaj Bahutule managing spinners, and T Dilip continuing as fielding coach, ten Doeschate had no specific area of responsibility for two full years despite being a full-time member of the support staff. The question of player security under Gambhir’s coaching has been a recurring theme in this era, and the same uncertainty extended to his own coaching staff.
The KKR Coaching Pipeline That Ran in Reverse
Ten Doeschate’s return to KKR completes a remarkable full circle. In July 2024, Gambhir effectively transplanted KKR’s entire coaching brain trust into the India dressing room. Two years later, every member of that group is back at the franchise.
Abhishek Nayar was the first to go. The BCCI terminated his contract in early 2025 after a review of India’s dismal Test results, including a 3-0 home whitewash against New Zealand and a 3-1 defeat in Australia. Internal feedback reportedly described his presence as “counter-productive.” Nayar returned to KKR immediately, first as a support coach during IPL 2025, and was then promoted to head coach for IPL 2026. The broader review of Gambhir and Agarkar’s performance had already raised serious questions about the coaching setup long before ten Doeschate’s exit.
Now ten Doeschate follows the same path back. KKR’s current coaching staff under Nayar includes Shane Watson as assistant coach, Tim Southee as bowling coach, and Dwayne Bravo as mentor. A fielding coach position could be the natural fit for ten Doeschate, the role he was originally promised at the national level but never received.
The white-ball results in England only added to the pressure on the coaching group. India lost the T20I series 0-4 to England and were beaten 0-2 in Ireland. The scale of those T20I defeats raised serious questions about the coaching staff’s effectiveness across formats. Dinesh Karthik had already pointed to tensions between Gambhir, Agarkar, and players as a sign that the setup was struggling internally, and Mohammad Kaif rated Gambhir’s coaching tenure 4 out of 10.
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The real lesson from this departure is one that cricket boards rarely acknowledge publicly. Franchise coaching and international coaching are fundamentally different jobs. The IPL is a two-month, high-intensity burst. You arrive, you prepare, you execute, you go home. The schedule is fixed, the squad is settled, and the window is short enough that family separation is manageable.
National team coaching is the opposite. It is year-round. You are away from home for months at a time across different formats, different countries, different time zones. The scrutiny is relentless. The selection politics are constant. The emotional toll on coaches with young families is something that rarely gets discussed in press conferences but is one of the biggest factors behind coaching burnouts and early exits in international cricket.
Gambhir’s experiment of importing his entire KKR coaching unit into the India setup was built on trust and familiarity. Those are valuable in a franchise environment where you have two months to get results. But international cricket tests relationships differently. It stretches them across calendar years, across losing streaks, across boardroom politics that do not exist in franchise cricket. Both Nayar and ten Doeschate are excellent coaches. Their returns to KKR are not failures. But the idea that a franchise coaching group can simply be replicated at the national level has now been tested and found wanting.
The BCCI is expected to review the entire coaching setup before India’s tour of Sri Lanka in August. Bowling coach Morne Morkel, who was part of the original Gambhir appointment, also has his contract reportedly concluding. T Dilip’s future remains uncertain after India’s fielding standards during the England and Ireland T20Is drew sharp criticism. Gambhir himself is expected to continue, his contract running until 2027, but the support staff around him will look completely different from the group he started with. With VVS Laxman already handling coaching duties for India’s concurrent Zimbabwe tour and being discussed as part of the broader restructuring around Gambhir, the BCCI has options, but the challenge of building a stable coaching group remains.
For ten Doeschate, the move back to KKR offers what the India job could not: a defined role, a manageable schedule, and proximity to his family. For the BCCI, his departure is the second signal in 18 months that the franchise-to-national pipeline needs rethinking.
Sources:
- BCCI source on fielding coach promise, July 15, 2026 Outlook India (PTI)
- Travel and KKR reunion report, July 14, 2026 RevSportz
- Step down report with details, July 14, 2026 Khel Now
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