New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) Former India senior men's selector Sarandeep Singh has been appointed as the head coach of the Delhi senior men's cricket team for the upcoming domestic season, the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) announced on Friday.

Sarandeep played three Tests and five ODIs for India between 2000 and 2003. He replaced his national selection committee colleague Devang Gandhi during 2016-2020. Along with this, V. Arvind and Bantu Singh have retained their roles as bowling and batting coaches respectively, while Kuldeep Rawat has become the new fielding coach of the senior team.

The biggest challenge for the new head coach Sarandeep is to make Delhi a strong team again after the poor performance of last season. The team's key players Nitish Rana and Dhruv Shori will play for Uttar Pradesh and Vidarbha, and the team is also struggling with injuries to many fast bowlers.

Last year, Delhi reached the semi-finals of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where it lost to Punjab. However, the team failed to enter the knockout stages of the Vijay Hazare Trophy and the Ranji Trophy. In the Ranji Trophy, it lost to Puducherry at home.

Delhi is in the Elite Group D of the Ranji Trophy along with Tamil Nadu, Saurashtra, Railways, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Chandigarh. The team will begin its Ranji Trophy season against Chhattisgarh on October 11 in Raipur.

Gursharan Singh, who was the batting coach of DDCA's High-Performance Group last season, has been made the chairman of the selection committee of the senior men's team. The panel also includes former Delhi head coach KP Bhaskar and Rajiv Vinayak. Former India fast bowler Parvinder Awana has been appointed the head coach of the Under-16 team.

The DDCA has also formed a team of mentors for the state for the upcoming domestic season. Former India and Delhi player Atul Wassan will mentor men's white-ball cricket, while former India cricketer Robin Singh Junior will mentor red-ball cricket. Former India women's cricketer Reema Malhotra will mentor the women's team.

For the women's team, former India all-rounder Amita Sharma has been retained as the chairperson of the senior selection committee. Swarana Chaddha and Sushma Chaudhary will join the committee. Anju Jain, Neha Tanwar and Mandeep Kaur will continue in their respective positions as head coach, batting coach and fielding coach, while Rishit Saini has been included as bowling coach.

Rishabh Pant and Mayank Yadav's coach Devendra Sharma, who was the wicketkeeping coach of the High-Performance Group last season, will join the Junior Women's Selection Committee as a member headed by Neelam Yadav.

“This is a great opportunity for me. I will work hard for the welfare of the girls so that they can do well in the future. I hope that some good young players will play this season,” Devendra told IANS.

Apart from this, Deepti Dhyani will continue in her role as Delhi Under-23 women's coach. She is the coach of India's Under-19 Women's T20 World Cup-winning batsman Shweta Sehrawat. In the High Performance Group, former Services batsman Soumik Chatterjee has been appointed as the head batting coach. While former Delhi fast bowler Sumit Narwal will be the head bowling coach.

–IANS

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