Tharanga Dhammika, Cricket Coach with golden touch

Champion team Bloomfield

• Guides Bloomfield to win SLC Major Club 3-day title
• Says “Team work and team unity ingredients for success”

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club Head Coach Tharanga Dhammika said team work and team unity were key ingredients for the club’s success in winning the SLC Major Club 3-day tournament when they beat NCC on the first innings in the final played at the R. Premadasa Cricket Stadium.

“It’s a young side. NCC is a good team. We used tactics suited to the final, good captaincy from Nipun (Karunanayake) with all the senior players supporting him. We always took collective decisions,” said Dhammika. “For a side like NCC which had 3 national fast bowlers we managed to bat out 174 overs and score 500 plus runs. It is not easy for a side to bat for so many overs. After that we didn’t panic, we put the ball in one spot and waited for the opposition to make a mistake because the wicket was good. The game went as we had planned. We were runner-up in the Major T20 tournament also. This is a tremendous performance because this is a young side. We got a lot of support from the management as well.”

Highlighting on the individual contributions made for Bloomfield, Dhammika said, “Ron (Chandraguptha) was in good batting form and came to the final on the back of a hundred. He is waiting for an opportunity to get into the national side. It’s not easy to bat for nearly 500 balls in a final. He held the Bloomfield innings together with the double century (237). It was quite clear the way he batted that he was not prepared to throw away his wicket. It will be ideal if he can break into the national side now that he is in good form.”

“Ravindu Fernando performed consistently well throughout the season and won the Player of the Tournament award. Asitha Wanninayake is a young talent, not even 22. In the first innings he was unfortunately run out for 96 but he scored a 100 in the second and it was against three national fast bowlers (Lahiru Kumara, Chamika Karunaratne and Chamika Gunasekara). He has a very good future. National player Vandy (Jeffrey Vandersay) we got a lot of support from him. He played only 3 matches for us because of national duty, but he performed in all of them.”

“The team unity is that in the first game two players delivered, the next game two others excelled, some failed in the batting but others dragged it. If you look at our individual performances there is no big run getters in our ranks. Most of the matches we have not scored 300 plus and won but scored around 200-250.”

The unique thing about Dhammika is that he had to return to the side as Head Coach for them to win another Major Club league title. It was under his guidance that Bloomfield last won in 2010-11.

“There is an art to winning after 15 years. If not they should have won it earlier. It was totally a team effort. In coaching I want to work without failure. You must have a sense of shame to fail, then only you can succeed,” said 48-year-old Dhammika, a former Nalanda College Captain and first-class cricketer.

In the 18 years he has been Head Coach of clubs like Bloomfield, CCC and Navy SC, Dhammika stated that he has won 5 Major Club 3-day league titles and 8 or more titles in T20 and one-day cricket.

“In Sri Lanka, I am the only coach in domestic cricket to have won 3 successive Major Club 3-day titles (2018-19, 2019-20 and 2022-23 for CCC). After that I thought if I was a good coach, I should be able to win a title for another club, which I have done by winning it for Bloomfield.” There was no tournament held in 2020-21 and 2021-22 due to COVID-19.

It is not only with club sides that Dhammika has shown his hand at winning. He was assistant coach when Dambulla won the National Super League in 2023 and assistant coach when B-Love Kandy won the LPL the same year.

Asked the secret of his success Dhammika replied, “Everyone asks that same question. To get the answer to that you have to give me in charge of a team and see how I handle it. CCC had national players and I built a champion team out of them. Bloomfield was a young side. At practice it is the quality and not the quantity that is important. There are certain things you cannot explain but if you watch what I am doing you can get a good understanding. It changes from team to team. What has to be changed is done through experience. The basic thing is hard work, risk and responsibility. I take the risk with the responsibility and it is done with hard work. It is an art. I don’t like failure. This year we couldn’t win the Major under 23 title but it is with those players that I have won the Major Club 3-day title.”

Dhammika undertook as Head Coach of Bloomfield last year and completes two years with them in December. He is awaiting to see where his success as coach will lead him to.