Ten Doeschate steps away from India’s staff with a KKR return waiting
Ryan ten Doeschate has ended a two-year stint as India’s assistant coach, and the former Netherlands captain is expected back at Kolkata Knight Riders before IPL 2027.
Jul 28, 2026
Ryan ten Doeschate has stepped down as assistant coach of India’s men’s team, and reports on Tuesday say the former Netherlands captain is on his way back to Kolkata Knight Riders before IPL 2027. It ends a two-year run inside Gautam Gambhir’s support staff.
The timing tells you plenty
Ten Doeschate is understood to have informed the BCCI of his decision while the squad was still in the United Kingdom. By that point the white-ball leg of the tour had already come apart. England won the T20I series 4-0 after the opener was washed out, and the ODIs followed the same script, 2-1, settled at Lord’s on 19 July in a game where Rohit Sharma’s 138 could not answer Ben Duckett’s 141.
Four losses in four completed T20Is was a first for India in a bilateral series. Shreyas Iyer picked up that particular record in his opening assignment as T20I captain, which is a rough way to start a job.
His deal with the BCCI had run its course regardless. He signed on in July 2024 and the contract expired in the middle of this month, so this is a man choosing not to re-sign rather than a man being moved on. The two things can look identical from the outside. They are not the same.
Two years, two very different ledgers
Judging the tenure depends entirely on which format you hold up. The white-ball side collected trophies. India beat Pakistan by five wickets in the Asia Cup final in Dubai in September 2025 for a ninth title, then won the T20 World Cup at home in March 2026, beating New Zealand by 96 runs in Ahmedabad to become the first team to defend the men’s title.
The Test side went the other way. New Zealand won 3-0 in India in November 2024, the first time any visiting side had whitewashed India at home across three or more matches. Australia took the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 3-1 that winter. Then South Africa arrived in November 2025 and won 2-0, a series that included a 408-run defeat in Guwahati, India’s heaviest by runs.
None of that sits on an assistant coach’s shoulders. He did not pick the sides or set the fields. But it is the record he leaves behind, and anyone reading his exit will read it against that.
A familiar address
Kolkata is well-trodden ground for him. He played in the KKR squads that won the IPL in 2012 and 2014, came back as fielding coach in 2022, and stayed until 2024, a spell that ended with another title under head coach Chandrakant Pandit, with Gambhir as mentor.
He also walks back into a dressing room with a familiar face in charge. Abhishek Nayar, appointed KKR head coach before IPL 2026, was alongside ten Doeschate in India’s support staff when both joined in 2024. Whatever else the move offers, it is not unfamiliar.
What India do about it
No replacement has been named. India’s next assignment is red-ball cricket in Sri Lanka, with the first Test at Galle from 15 August and the second in Colombo from 23 August, and Gambhir goes into it with one fewer experienced voice in the room. For a coaching group that has spent the past 12 months answering questions about Test results, losing a member of staff a fortnight out is not the preparation anyone wanted.