Former Indian opening batter and cricket analyst Sadagoppan Ramesh has questioned the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) franchise for appointing Zaheer Khan as their new head coach for the forthcoming IPL 2027 season.
Notably, on Monday, September 21, the CSK think tank appointed the former left-arm pacer as their new head coach for the new season. Ramesh, while speaking on his Instagram handle, questioned the move since the legendary pacer doesn’t have any coaching experience.
“Zaheer was a great cricketer and a fantastic bowler. But his only coaching experience has been working in the cricketing operations for MI from 2018 to 2022 and one year with LSG as mentor. However, this is the first time he’ll be the head coach of an IPL franchise. So we have to keep our fingers crossed,” Ramesh said.
Zaheer worked as a Director of Cricket and Global Head at MI from 2018 to 2022. Later, he was roped in by LSG as team mentor from 2024 to 2025. He played 92 Tests, 200 ODIs and 17 T20Is for India.
Further, Ramesh reckoned that Ashish Nehra’s success as the Gujarat Titans (GT) head coach prompted CSK to take this route. Under Nehra, the Titans won the IPL title in 2022 and finished runners-up twice in 2023 and 2026.
“Finally, CSK have an Indian head coach for the first time. They’ve finally gone from a foreign coach mentality to an Indian coach mentality. I feel CSK saw the success of Ashish Nehra with GT and wanted to try something similar with the appointment of Zaheer Khan to see if it can spark a turnaround,” he added.
