Sitanshu Kotak

Some Lesser Known Facts About Sitanshu Kotak

• Sitanshu Kotak is an Indian cricketer and coach who played for Saurashtra in the domestic circuit. He has coached many teams including Saurashtra, India A, and the national team of India for many years. He never represented India in any international match despite scoring more than 8000 first-class runs.

• He liked watching cricket since his childhood, and at the age of thirteen, he started learning cricket under Saurashtra Ranji player, Mahendra Rajdev.

• In the early 1990s, he started playing for age group teams of Saurashtra and Gujarat and later played for Saurashtra team in various domestic tournaments such as Ranji Trophy, Deodhar Trophy, Irani Trophy, and Vijay Hazare Trophy.

  

• When he was growing up, he used to follow Mohinder Amarnath and Kapil Dev, members of the 1983 World Cup-winning team. During his playing days, he used to look up to Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and used his techniques in his style of play.

  

• Sitanshu Kotak’s name spread after he scored a century against Karnataka in the 1999-2000 Irani Trophy. Karnataka featured Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath as their premium bowlers who found it difficult to dismiss Kotak.

  

• In an interview, Sitanshu talked about his selection for India and said that he was hoping for selection to the national team in the late 1990s as he made more than 800 runs in the 1998-99 Ranji Trophy season and a century in both the Deodhar and Duleep Trophy. He was not selected and later came to know that selectors had a misconception about his age and thought that Sitanshu was 37 years old when he was only 27 years old at that time.

  

•  In an interview, Sitanshu revealed that at the age of 30 years, he got the idea that he would never be selected to represent India which changed his thinking and approach and made him more firm to score runs. He later said that he wanted to display his batting skills to every bowler and wanted to make them think that he had the same level of skills as any international cricketer.

  

• In a group stage match during the 2007-08 Ranji Trophy season, he batted for 796 minutes (13 hours 16 minutes) over three days and made 168 runs not out in 543 balls. His innings irritated many Mumbai players including their captain, Amol Muzumdar, who referred to the duration of Kotak’s innings after the match and said that he needed a Kotak massage, not an ordinary one.

  

• Sitanshu made 89 runs in 211 balls during the semifinal match against Mumbai in the 2008-09 Ranji Trophy and stayed on the crease for 5 hours 25 minutes. Indian legendary batsman Sachin Tendulkar was playing in the match and told Sitanshu that he had heard from fellow players that Sitanshu tired the rival players by playing for long hours and asked Sitanshu to hit a shot and lose his wicket.

  

• Reportedly, an IPL franchise approached Sitanshu with a managerial offer in 2008, mostly related to coaching, which he did not take up as he was playing cricket at that time, and at that time, he liked playing cricket more than coaching.

  

• He also held a job with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and played many corporate cricket tournaments for them. He also served as captain of BPCL and Saurashtra in various domestic seasons.

  

• Sitanshu Kotak also played for the English club Kenilworth Wardens for many years from 1996 to 2015.

  

• BCCI secretary and Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) head, Niranjan Shah, had a very good association with Sitanshu for more than 2 decades.

• One year after retiring from Indian domestic cricket in 2o13, he started working as a coach and was appointed as the coach of the Saurashtra team in October 2014. Before taking up the role of coach, he completed Level 1 and 2 coaching courses from BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board). ^[1]Instagram – Sitanshu Kotak

  

• Sitanshu talked about the financial condition of Indian domestic players in an interview in 2013 and said that since his father was a businessman, he never had to worry about money, but during the 1990s and early 2000s, there was very little money in the domestic circuit. He later said that franchise leagues such as the Indian Premier League (IPL) provided a necessary financial boost to the players.

• English club Warwickshire County’s Elite Cricket Development Manager, Paul Greetham, gave Sitanshu a coaching offer in 2015 which he denied to continue as the coach of Saurashtra.

  

• He was appointed as an assistant coach of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Gujarat Lions in 2016. He also coached BPCL in many cricket competitions.

  

• Sitanshu Kotak became the Head Coach of the India A team in August 2019. He later served as the batting coach at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru where he also helped Rishabh Pant with his batting.
  

  

  

• During the T20I series against Ireland in August 2023, Sitanshu Kotak became the head coach of India after Rahul Dravid was given a rest. During the ODI series against South Africa in December 2023, he served as India’s head coach again.