David Saker, Australia’s assistant coach, will be the head coach of the team from Down Under for the One-Day International series in India later this year.

Saker, who was named as Australia’s assistant coach last year after the role was vacated by Craig McDermott, will replace head coach Darren Lehmann – who will be taking a much-needed break. The busy cricket schedule has taken a toll on Lehmann’s health and as a result, the coaching workload has been shared in recent times.

The former Australia international was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis during the ODI series against India in January last year and was hospitalised after the condition which he had previously suffered in 2007 was confirmed. At that time, Michael Di Venuto, the then assistant coach, had coached the team during the succeeding T20I series. Later, Lehmann’s former teammate Justin Langer took charge of the team during the last year’s Tri-Series win in the West Indies. Langer also returned to the coaching role during the T20 series against Sri Lanka last month when Lehmann was preparing his boys for the India tour.

Expressing his delight over the news, Saker said:

“It’s a huge honour to be even considered to be a coach of an Australian team, and to be given the opportunity is fantastic.”

Saker, who had led Victoria to the Sheffield Shield title in 2015-16, further said he is eyeing the head coach role of the Australian team in future.

“I’m going to look forward to it a lot, and my ambition is to coach Australia. I know not playing cricket for Australia makes it a little bit harder,” said Saker who played 72 first-class matches for Tasmania and Victoria, taking 247 wickets.

“But I think I’ve been involved in Test cricket, one-day cricket and Twenty20 cricket a lot. I’ve seen a lot of cricket, so I think I could do the job without a doubt,” he added.

Meanwhile, Cricket Australia has reported it’ll be a seven-match ODI series to be played in October later this year.