{"id":2163422,"date":"2025-11-18T02:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T02:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2163422"},"modified":"2025-11-18T02:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T02:47:10","slug":"kumar-sangakkara-returns-as-rajasthan-royals-head-coach-for-ipl-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/kumar-sangakkara-returns-as-rajasthan-royals-head-coach-for-ipl-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumar Sangakkara returns as Rajasthan Royals head coach for IPL 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rajasthanroyals.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Rajasthan Royals<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0are pleased to announce that<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/sangalefthander\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u00a0<strong>Kumar Sangakkara<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has been reappointed as head coach of the franchise, in addition to continuing his role as Director of Cricket.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cricexec.com\/kumar-sangakkara-net-worth-career-earnings-salary-history-achievements-and-endorsements\/689561932\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sangakkara<\/a> previously served as head coach of the Royals from 2021 to 2024, a period that marked a clear rise in the team\u2019s performance and consistency.<\/p>\n<p>Under his leadership, the Royals reached the IPL 2022 final and returned to the playoffs in 2024, reaffirming the Royals\u2019 status as one of the most consistently competitive sides over the period.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are delighted to have Kumar return as head coach. As we looked at what the team needed at this stage, we felt that his familiarity within the squad, his leadership and his deep understanding of the Royals culture would bring the right balance of continuity and stability\u201d, said Manoj Badale, Lead Owner, Rajasthan Royals. \u201cKumar has always had our complete trust as a leader. His clarity, calmness and cricketing intelligence will play an important role in guiding the squad into this next phase.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Royals also confirm that\u00a0<strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/vikramrathourofficial\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vikram Rathour<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0has been elevated to lead assistant coach, working closely with Sangakkara on batting development, game plans and overall team preparation.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/shane.bond27\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shane Bond<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0will continue as fast bowling coach, providing important continuity to the pace programme, while Trevor Penney and Sid Lahiri return as assistant coach and performance coach, respectively, adding further depth and expertise to the coaching group ahead of the upcoming season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m honoured to return as head coach and continue working with this talented group,\u201d said Kumar Sangakkara, head coach and Director of Cricket, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cricexec.com\/author\/rajasthan-royals-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rajasthan Royals<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m also pleased to have a strong coaching team alongside me. Vikram, Trevor, Shane and Sid each bring valuable experience in their areas and together we are focused on preparing the players in the best possible way. We have a clear understanding of where we want to go as a group and our aim is to build a team that plays with clarity, resilience and purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cricexec.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rajasthan Royals\u00a0are pleased to announce that\u00a0Kumar Sangakkara\u00a0has been reappointed as head coach of the franchise, in addition to continuing his role as Director of Cricket. Sangakkara previously served as head coach of the Royals from 2021 to 2024, a period that marked a clear rise in the team\u2019s performance and consistency. Under his leadership, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2163423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[396135,326872,386433,324902],"class_list":["post-2163422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-bcci","tag-ipl","tag-kumar-sangakkara","tag-rajasthan-royals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Kumar-Sangakkara-returns-as-Rajasthan-Royals-head-coach-for-IPL.webp.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163424,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163422\/revisions\/2163424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2163423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}