Albie Morkel and Mohit Sharma are back at CSK, and Zaheer Khan’s coaching staff for IPL 2027 is complete
Chennai Super Kings have added Albie Morkel, Mohit Sharma and Surrey’s Gareth Batty as assistant coaches, replacing the long-serving staff who left after Stephen Fleming.
Oct 28, 2026
Chennai Super Kings have finished rebuilding their dugout. On 27 October the franchise named Albie Morkel, Gareth Batty and Mohit Sharma as assistant coaches for IPL 2027, all three working under Zaheer Khan, who took over as head coach on 21 September.
The appointments fill a backroom that emptied fast once Stephen Fleming left in July. Batting coach Mike Hussey, bowling coach Eric Simons, strength and conditioning coach Greg King and physio Tommy Simsek have all gone, most of them after long spells at the club. Two coaches stay on from last season: assistant bowling coach Sridharan Sriram and fielding coach James Foster.
Two old Super Kings come home
Morkel is the one Chepauk will know best. The South African all-rounder played for CSK from the first IPL season in 2008 until 2013, scoring 827 runs and taking 76 wickets in 78 matches, and he was in the side that won the title in 2010 and again in 2011. He later turned out for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Delhi and Rising Pune Supergiant, but nobody thinks of him in those shirts.
Mohit goes back almost as far. CSK signed him in 2013, and a year later he won the Purple Cap with 23 wickets. He left for Kings XI Punjab after the 2015 season, came back for 2019, and finished his career with other teams. In 2023 he was one of Gujarat Titans’ main bowlers in the final they lost to CSK in Ahmedabad. He announced his retirement from all cricket on 3 December 2025.
Batty swaps the Oval for Chepauk
Batty is the outsider, though not to Zaheer. The former England off-spinner played for Worcestershire from 2002 to 2009, and Zaheer spent the 2006 county season there, taking 78 wickets. Batty went back to Surrey in 2010, captained them from 2015 to 2017, and went straight onto the coaching staff when he retired in 2021.
It is easy to see why CSK wanted him. Surrey won the County Championship in 2022, 2023 and 2024, the first side in nearly 60 years to win three in a row. His departure, announced on 26 October, ends a 21-year association with the club.
“The new journey is a very exciting one for my family and I with CSK in the IPL and I’m looking forward to getting going,” Batty told Surrey’s website. Alec Stewart, the club’s director of cricket, said the IPL role would let him “spend more time with his family outside of the IPL season.”
What Zaheer has to fix
The staff is new because the results have been poor. CSK have won the IPL five times, the last in 2023, but they have missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, finishing bottom in 2025 and eighth in 2026. Fleming, who had been with the franchise for 18 years, was appointed England’s men’s Test head coach on 30 July.
Zaheer has never been a head coach before. He mentored Lucknow Super Giants in IPL 2025, and CSK managing director Kasi Viswanathan has said it was MS Dhoni who first suggested his name. What he now has is a staff with two former Chennai players who know what the place expects, and a county coach who won three Championships in a row. Whether that gets CSK back into the top four is a question for next season.