Gujarat Giants have made the most consequential coaching call of the Pro Kabaddi League's pre-season. The Ahmedabad-based franchise confirmed in March that veteran tactician Randhir Singh Sehrawat will take over as head coach for PKL season 13, ending a coaching search that began as soon as the team's 2025 campaign ran out of steam.
Sehrawat is one of Indian kabaddi's most experienced coaches — a name closely tied to building disciplined defensive units and to working effectively with high-volume international raiders. The Gujarat Giants have leaned on a left-corner-led defensive scheme since the franchise's earliest seasons, and the appointment is widely read as a back-to-basics move: get the structure right, build out from there.
The Giants' challenge in PKL 13 isn't squad depth — it's continuity. The franchise has cycled through coaches more than most rivals in recent seasons, and that turnover has interrupted the kind of multi-season tactical identity that PKL champions like Dabang Delhi (PKL 12 champions in October) and the Patna Pirates of earlier eras have built. Sehrawat's job is to give the Giants that identity again.
There is also a player-management angle. PKL season 13 will run after the Asian Games in Japan, where India defends its men's gold medal with several PKL stars in the squad. Whichever Giants players go to the Games — and the camp at the Inspire Institute of Sport in Bellary already includes names like Pawan Sehrawat, who has been linked to the Giants in past seasons via the auction — will return to club duty needing a coach who can quickly integrate them back into the franchise's structure. That is exactly the kind of work Sehrawat has done before.
The wider PKL landscape is competitive. Dabang Delhi's title defence will benefit from Fazel Atrachali's continued anchor presence at the corner, and the Tamil Thalaivas have built a roster around marquee raiders Pawan Sehrawat and Arjun Deshwal that will be hard to slow. The Giants' pre-season window is short, but the appointment of a head coach with this profile is the sort of decision that sets up the rest of the off-season — auction strategy, retention calls, captain selection — to be made with one consistent tactical voice.
No formal pre-season camp date has been confirmed. What has been confirmed is the man making the call. PKL 13 begins later in 2026; the Giants now have the months between to build something that lasts longer than a single campaign.
