Sulakshan Kulkarni has been appointed as Head Coach of Chhattisgarh State Cricket Team, informed Baldeo Singh Bhatia, President of Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh (CSCS) while addressing a press conference here on Friday.
“We have also appointed Ashish Agrawal as the Physiotherapist of our team and Prahlad Patel as Trainer.
Ashish has worked with Vidarbha team while Prahlad has provided his services to Vadodara team,” Bhatia told reporters at the CSCS office here.
While accepting that Chhattisgarh team selected for Ranji Trophy was weak on bowling side, he informed that very soon a bowling coach will be also appointed.
Notably, CSCS was given full-time associated membership few months back by the BCCI.
Sulakshan Kulkarni between 1985 to 2002 had represented Mumbai, Railways, Assam, Vidarbha and Madhya Pradesh in the Raji, Duleep, Deodhar, Irani & Wills Trophies. Kulkarni has played first class cricket with India’s two all time great cricketers viz. Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar for Mumbai.
He is recipient of Best Ranji Cricketer for Mumbai- 1995-96, Best Ranji Bastsman in Ranji Trophy( 1995-96) and Best Wicket Keeper award for breaking National record (taking 38 wickets) in Ranji Trophy (1996-97).
According to Kulkarni, though Chhattisgarh lacked experience of playing first class cricket but its performance at Associate level matches was outstanding.
“The under-19 and under 23 team of Chhattisgarh had a very impressive performance at Board level matches,” he said.
Describing his priorities he said that winning Ranji trophy will be his aim and the selected players will be trained accordingly.