Kolkata Knight Riders have appointed Englishman James Foster as a fielding coach ahead of the new IPL season.
The former wicketkeeper-batsman played seven Tests for England as well as five T20Is and 11 ODIs before retiring in 2018.
He has experience working with Sydney Thunder in Australia’s BBL, England, England Lions, Glamorgan and the Khulna Titans in the Bangladesh Premier League.
Foster replaces Subhadeep Ghosh and comes in as the latest new face after Brendon McCullum was named head coach following the departure of Jacques Kallis.
Kolkata are aiming to win their third IPL title and first since 2014. Since the last title success, they have made it to the play-offs three times but crashed out before that stage on two other occasions.
They are considered 8.00 (7/1) chances with bet365 to go all the way in 2020.
KKR just missed out on a play-off place in 2019 when finishing fifth on net run rate behind Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Kolkata hoping big spending will help title chances
As well as revamping their off-field set-up, KKR have also bolstered their playing squad with big-money arrivals ahead of IPL 2020.
They spent the most of any other franchise on one individual player during the IPL 2020 Auction. That was to bring in Aussie pace star Pat Cummins for a 15,50,00,000.
They also bought England limited-overs skipper Eoin Morgan and rising star Tom Banton. KKR added Australian spinner Chris Green and local talent Rahul Tripathi, Varun Chakaravarthy and Manimaran Siddharth.
The left-handed Morgan represented KKR in 2011, 2012 and 2013 before moving to the Kings XI Punjab and later the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Despite Morgan boosting the KKR ranks, McCullum has already confirmed wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik has retained the team captaincy for the new campaign.
After the auction, he said: “Dinesh is definitely our captain. We wanted to get as much experienced leadership as possible and Eoin is one of the very best leaders going around currently in our game.
“A perfect lieutenant for Dinesh and Morgan will also fill the gap at number four in the order. He is in the form of his life. He is going to be a fine asset coming back to KKR.”
