After much soul searching Sri Lanka Cricket eventually found a successor to Graham Ford when they appointed former Sri Lanka cricketer Chandika Hathurusingha to take charge of the men’s national cricket team in December last year, but the same cannot be said of the Sri Lanka under 19 team and the Sri Lanka Women’s team. These two sides badly lack a proper head coach for them to make any further progress in the sport and not only be a competitive unit but able to win titles.
Our under 19 cricketers however much we boast of a strong school system have yet to win an under 19 cricket World Cup, the women are nowhere close to winning one let alone qualifying for the last four. Sri Lanka Women who once were dominant over teams like West Indies and Pakistan and now being beaten fair and square under their own conditions and pitches. The recent ODI series saw Pakistan Women whitewash our women cricketers 3-0 and also win the T20I series 2-1. Even the West Indies Women cricketers have improved in leaps and bounds that they are ranked five ahead of Pakistan (7th) and Sri Lanka (8th). Pakistan were a team that Sri Lanka could easily beat a decade or so ago, but whereas the Pakistan Women’s team have improved greatly we are still struggling to be competitive. With the exception of a one-off win here and there, our women cricketers have failed to be consistent in their performances.
The women’s team has gone through the hands of several coaches who were past Sri Lankan cricketers but the improvement has been rather painstakingly slow so that other countries have already moved ahead while we remain stagnant. It’s not that we don’t have any cricketers of international repute there are quite a few individuals who could get into any team - players like Chamari Atapattu, Shashikala Siriwardena, Chamari Polgampola, Dilani Manodara, Inoka Ranaweera, and Sripali Weerakkody, but as a team there are many grey areas that needs fine-tuning.
One of the key factors is that unlike men’s cricket, the women’s cricket team does not have school cricket as its nursery. As a result a Sri Lankan woman cricketer starts her career rather late in her teens or early twenties which is not the right age to teach the basics of the game when there are so many other distractions. Only recently attempts are being made by SLC to rectify that lapse by encouraging girls’ schools to undertake the sport, the campaign being spearheaded by Apsari Tillakaratne (wife of former Sri Lanka captain Hashan Tillakaratne).
Now that Sri Lanka Cricket has tried their hand at appointing local coaches to handle the women’s team and seen the results over the years why not for a change get someone from overseas? The men’s team reached the finals of six World Cups and won two of them when a foreign coach handled them. So why not our women cricketers also be given the same opportunity and see how far they improve. The only hitch with a foreign coach is the communication problem as the majority of our women cricketers’ converse mainly in the native language. If that shortcoming can be rectified SLC should not hesitate to give a shot at it and see the outcome of the results.
The same could be said of our under 19 cricketers too. Unlike the women counterparts the under 19 cricketers have a strong school base from which to select their squads.
The talent is so overflowing to the extent that Sri Lanka could field more than one team of equal strength. However there seems to be a shortcoming from the coaching part as the best of talent is not properly harnessed and used to get the maximum results. Sri Lanka’s poor showing in the recently concluded Under 19 World Cup in New Zealand was due to bad selection by the team management that saw them fail to qualify for a place in the knockout stage (quarterfinals) and end up as Plate winners in ninth place.
The team was oozing with talent and if handled properly could have even made it to the final – a feat Sri Lanka has achieved only once in 2000 when they hosted the tournament. Even in the under 19 Asia Cup, Sri Lanka has come only as far the final once again when they were the hosts in 2016.
SLC are in the process of finding a successor to Roy Dias who has handled the under 19 team since May 2016. What the SLC should look for is a coach who is familiar with the current trend of international cricket and is well versed in all three formats – Tests, ODIs and T20Is. You don’t need a coach who frowns when a batsman plays a reverse sweep, a switch hit, a Dilscoop or hits the first ball he receives for a six.
The game has changed so much in the past three decades that the coach has to let the natural talent and flair flourish instead of trying to curb it. It would not be a bad idea even for the under 19 team to be handled by a foreign coach because with them there are no strings attached when it comes to training, selections etc. They have a reputation to safeguard and will not compromise in anyway, which means that the team will benefit the most. Isn’t that what we are all looking for?
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