New policy change: Cricket head coach to work with coaching staff picked by SLC

Friday, 4 February 2022 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Sri Lanka Cricket CEO Ashley de Silva

More emphasis given to local coaches to hold positions in national team

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Sri Lanka Cricket has changed their early policy of allowing the head coach of the national cricket team to select his own coaching staff and instead will nominate local coaches to those positions.

“Our policy would be in future to go for all the other positions with the local coaches and the head coach’s position would be either a local or a foreigner. Once the head coach is selected he will be compelled to work with the support staff members who are expertise in those areas. We are trying to give the local coaches an opportunity and see how they will perform. The physio probably will be a foreign person and it will be done by the doctors’ panel,” said Sri Lanka Cricket CEO Ashley de Silva.

Sri Lanka are still on the hunt to find a successor to Mickey Arthur, who quit the head coach’s position to take up an appointment with English county Derbyshire at the end of the T20 World Cup in UAE in November and has appointed former fast bowler and fast bowling coach of the High Performance Centre Rumesh Ratnayake as interim coach for the upcoming tours to Australia and India.

“Generally what happens in most of the countries is they select the support staff members and the head coach is asked to work with them. In the past we had positions for the foreign coaches and when the head coach was recruited we gave him the option of selecting the foreign coaches,” said De Silva.

“In Australia and in England they select the head coach and nominate the support staff members to work with him. The head coach’s role would be to overlook all the areas. He should have the expertise in all the areas and should be able to work with the people whoever has been nominated.

“In future SLC along with the Tech (Technical and Advisory) committee will nominate the support staff and the head coach, whoever it may be foreign or local, has to fall in line and work with them. That is the policy for the future. Apart from the head coach the rest of the coaches have already been nominated.”

De Silva said that the head coach’s position has not been finalised yet. “The SLC is working along with the Tech committee to fill the position. After having discussions, we are waiting for a decision from the Tech committee. No sooner we get it we will make an announcement.”