Players keen to make SL a white ball force again: Coach Mickey Arthur

Head Coach Mickey Arthur (left) says Dimuth Karunaratne has led the Test side well and helped create a depth in the unit

• “Bangladesh tour is very important to our destiny”: Arthur

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

The rapid decline of Sri Lanka’s white ball cricket standards has been extremely alarming over the past five years or so and Head Coach Mickey Arthur is confident that in the coming months the team would be turning the corner very soon.

“White ball cricket is certainly what we are most concerned about right now. We certainly have a lot of work to do with our white ball cricket, but we got a vision and a plan, and I believe we got the players to really make it work,” Arthur, who turned 53 yesterday, told Daily FT before the team left for a three-match ODI series to Bangladesh. 

“We’ve just got to be consistent with our selections and be consistent with the roles that the players get. I got a plan in terms of the combinations I want to play, so hopefully, the guys take the opportunity and run with it. Sri Lanka cricket for a long period now, even before me, have had battles. We’ve been low down in the rankings and that’s acceptable. We got to get ourselves up that ranking. The only way we can do it is by playing good aggressive cricket particularly in our white ball format.”

Asked what Sri Lanka has to do to come out of the white ball slump, where they are ranked 8th in T20Is and 9th in ODIs, Arthur said: “We’ve just to give confidence to the players and make sure we got a brand that is really good, one that matches the brand of the other teams around the world. We must make sure that we are producing players and they keep on improving. That will be up to myself and the coaching staff to make sure our players get better every day at training. Once we get the whole thing going, hopefully, we have a little bit of success down the line, you’ll see us emerging hopefully into the team I want us to be.”

Arthur said the T20 World Cup, which is due to be held towards the end of the year, was Sri Lanka’s immediate goal, but added: “People forget that every ODI we play, it’s a qualification for the 2023 World Cup. It is extremely important for us and also the T20 World Cup. There’s a lot of focus being put in our white ball cricket and this is really the beginning of an extended period of white ball cricket for us. We have to really make it work, get our combinations right, get our brands right and show that we are ready for the challenges ahead.”

Coach’s culture

Arthur said the culture he has brought to the team for it to be successful is work ethic.

“You’ve got to take the results out of the equation. If we get better every day, if our environment is making players better, the environment is making the players excellent, one of continued growth and excellence, we will get the results down the line. Getting those players working hard and getting into good habits and maintaining good standards is happening at the moment.”

Fitness is one of the key areas that Arthur has laid emphasis on to improve the team’s playing standards.

“The fitter we can be the better we can be. Fitness doesn’t guarantee you runs and wickets but what it does guarantee is it gives you a better chance to score runs and take wickets. I want the players to be in optimum conditions, so that we can give ourselves every opportunity of performing to our best,” said Arthur. 

“We are getting better every day with our training, with our skills and our fitness. Every day we are hammering it in. The players are working extremely hard and they really have been excellent. The players want to get better, they are ambitious and they want to do well. That’s the most important thing.”

Describing his progress in the one-and-a-half years as head coach, Arthur said, “It’s been 1½ years, but I feel we are starting all over again with our white ball team, because we had nine months of that 1½ years not playing any cricket. Our Test team, led very well by Dimuth (Karunaratne), we got it right, we have now created a depth within our Test unit. But for us it’s a kind of fresh start with our white ball team. We have played only six ODIs since I’ve been in Sri Lanka, three were before COVID against West Indies which we won, and we had three post-COVID against West Indies when we didn’t have our full side out there, so I feel we are starting all over again with our white ball team.”

“The players have been outstanding, they’ve just got on and tried to do as much as we could, it has been a very tough time for everybody all round the world. We certainly can’t complain. We’ve just been very lucky to be doing something we love, but it has been tough. We haven’t had the proper preparation times, it’s been stop-start, tours have come, tours have gone, it’s been back-to-back tours, but we are trying to make the best of it. Sri Lanka Cricket has been outstanding, they’ve provided us with whatever we’ve wanted and we are trying to make the best of a bad situation,” he said.

The upcoming ODI series against Bangladesh, Arthur said, was very important for Sri Lanka. 

“Every time we go out and play we expect to win. This Bangladesh series is vitally important (a) because it is a new ODI team, and (b) because we have to get those points on the board quickly. It is a vital series and one I am looking forward to, one that I know that is very important to our destiny.”

“I love Sri Lanka”

Currently one of the most experienced international cricket coaches going around the world, Arthur who has coached several top Test playing nations like South Africa, Australia and Pakistan, said that Sri Lanka is the country he loved most.

“I love Sri Lanka, I love the country, I love the people, I love the players; they are fantastic. They want to get better, they want success, and they want to be driven every day, to be honest and communicating. I am hoping that I am bringing all of them. Colombo is a beautiful city, it’s a beautiful country and the players are excellent. They want to make Sri Lanka cricket proud and they are working damn hard to do that.”

Arthur is contracted with Sri Lanka Cricket for two years and his contract will come up for renewal towards the end of the year. 

“I feel that we are just getting somewhere because our first year was just COVID, we couldn’t do our coaching consistently because we had such long breaks and stop starts all the time. I am hoping that we can keep driving this culture forward, and I am hoping that I will be there and given the opportunity to try and do that.