Players need to learn from their mistakes: Pothas

By Madushka Balasuriya

Chandika Hathurusingha will officially be taking over the reigns as head coach of Sri Lanka Cricket tomorrow, and outgoing interim coach Nic Pothas believes his successor will have his work cut out for him in turning the team’s fortunes around.

“There’s definitely been progress, that’s been the exciting part,” said Pothas following Sri Lanka’s defeat to India in the third and final ODI in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. “But by the same token there’s also been things that haven’t changed at all. What the answer to that is, I’m not sure. But certainly it’s going to be exciting to have Hathu on board and whatever I can do to support him and help Sri Lankan cricket in the future, then I will look forward to doing that.”

Pothas, who stepped up from a role as fielding coach to take up interim coach position in June - which Graham Ford had vacated abruptly citing differences with Sri Lankan cricket board - has overseen a rough spell for the national team in which they suffered a home ODI series defeat to Zimbabwe, a home Test and limited overs whitewash at the hands of India, a limited overs whitewash in the UAE to Pakistan and now a Test and ODI series loss in India.

Despite the results however Pothas’ demeanour during his brief stint as coach has been a picture of positivity, while the team itself has seen improvements in the longer format of the game - most notably when they beat Pakistan 2-0 in a Test series in the UAE. However, he felt that for the team to improve in all formats, they will need to start learning from their mistakes.

“If I summed up our ODI cricket I would say, ‘don’t learn fast enough’. I think in Test match cricket it’s the exact opposite the guys have learnt very quickly to adapt, but I think in ODI form of the game I think there’s still too many of the same errors, I keep talking about it, we keep crossing the street and getting run over by the same bus over and over again.”

Pothas’ final game in charge saw Sri Lanka throw away a commanding position, and a chance at recording a historic series win in India, when they lost their last eight wickets for just 55 runs. The chief antagonists in Sri Lanka’s batting efforts were spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, who picked up six wickets between - this despite Pothas admitting that the team had planned against just such an eventuality.

“In hindsight we can always look back and pick holes in the system, but we had a strategy to get as many players of spin into the middle order - here if you want to play against India in ODI cricket you’ve got to play spin in the middle order - so that strategy I think is sound but unfortunately in one over two soft dismissals puts you behind the black ball a little bit.”

Pothas will return to his position as a member of the Lankan support staff once Hathurusingha officially takes over, whose first assignment will be the three-match T20I series against India which begins in Cuttack tomorrow.