Former England captain Kevin Pietersen has thrown his hat in the ring to become the new batting coach of the Indian cricket team after reports emerged that the BCCI is mulling options to add a new member to head coach Gautam Gambhir’s backroom staff. Responding to one of the posts on X, Pietersen wrote, “I’m available.”

According to a Cricbuzz report, talks are on within the BCCI and the team management to add a new batting coach, following the batters’ failure in the recent Test series against New Zealand and Australia. However, an official statement is yet to be made by the BCCI.

The BCCI’s reported move comes in the backdrop of India’s batting fiasco in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25. In the 10 innings against Australia, Indian batters scored 300-plus on just two occasions. Among the Indian batters, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma,  were severely criticised.

While the Indian captain managed just 31 runs in five innings, Kohli managed just 190 runs in five matches, with a sole hundred. What caught the eye was Kohli’s repeated failures against the deliveries outside the off-stump. In his nine innings, Kohli got out in the same manner eight times Down Under.

How the Indian coaching staff look like now?

Fielding coach T Dilip was the only person retained from former coach Rahul Dravid’s support staff when Gautam Gambhir took over. Currently, South African Morne Morkel is the bowling coach while Dutch Ryan ten Doeschate and Abhishek Nayar are the assistant coaches.

Notably, the trio of Morkel, Nayar and Ten Doeschate have all worked with Gambhir in Indian Premier League. Morkel served as a bowling coach at Lucknow Super Giants with Gambhir, Nayar and Ten Doeschate were part of the Kolkata Knight Riders backroom staff.

Nayar, who was the batting coach at KKR, is serving in the same role in the Indian cricket team currently. For England, Pietersen has played 104 Tests, 136 ODIs and 37 T20Is, accumulating 13,797 runs across formats.