Former Sri Lanka Test skipper and World Cup winner Hashan Tillakaratne is expected to be appointed Head Coach of the Sri Lanka National Women’s Cricket team, ThePapare.com learns.
Since his retirement in the early 2000s, Tillakaratne has held various administrative positions at Sri Lanka Cricket, the most recent being as Head Coach of the Sri Lanka Under 19 Boys’ team which finished in 10th position at the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in early 2020.
He will take over from Lanka de Silva, who functioned as interim Head Coach from August 2020, after the departure of Harsha de Silva following the T20 World Cup.
2020 and 2021 were expected to be busy seasons for the Sri Lanka Women’s Cricket Team, however, they are yet to return to international cricket since the T20 World Cup in March 2020. Sri Lanka are also the only top 10 ranked women’s team yet to have resumed internationals of any form since COVID-19 hit.
There are no confirmed fixtures on the horizon for the team ahead of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 qualifiers set to be played later this year in the island. The qualifiers were originally scheduled to be played in July 2020 but were postponed to December of this year due to the pandemic.
The team will also feature in qualifiers for the 2022 Commonwealth Games sometime this year.
