Have you watched Australian spinner Ashton Agar’s comments on Rangana Herath after the Aussies were given a proper hiding by Bangladesh in Dhaka in the second T-20 International of the five match series?
You can watch it on the Cricket Australia Twitter handle but we will save you the trouble. “Bangladesh spinners can get the ball to hang in the air because it’s going from a low to high rather than high to low. Their spin bowling coach is Rangana Herath, who is one of the best ever doing that,” Agar says.
Bangladesh’s spin bowlers are in the safe hands of Rangana Herath. Sri Lanka Cricket were interested in Herath and were negotiating with him for a few months but eventually gave it up and Herath was left with no choice but to move to Dhaka. This is someone SLC shouldn’t have let get away, having invested in him so much, grooming him to become a coach soon after he retired. SLC rightly identified that Herath had the necessary ingredients to become a coach, invested in him and then let Bangladesh grab him. Hopefully one day he will return.
What you get with Herath is not just expertise on spin bowling but other key aspects such as his calming influence in the dressing room, apart from the experience of 20 years of Test cricket which can stand you in good stead in a moment of crisis. There was this school of thought that with many of Herath’s contemporaries in the Sri Lankan dressing room, his return to the dressing room as a coach wasn’t an ideal move. There may be some sense in those sentiments but the national team is not the only arena where Herath’s expertise could have come in handy.
Like so many coaches that SLC have employed at RPS, Herath too could have fitted in for a similar role.
You would be able to see the excellent work that Chaminda Vaas has done with the fast bowlers since taking over the job in April and by the time the team goes to Australia early next year, he would have developed a good fast bowling unit like that of India at present.
The norm at present seems to be that for every coaching appointment authorities are looking overseas. Even for the Under-19 side the board was negotiating with a foreigner. Sanity prevailed and one of our most successful coaches in school cricket Dhammika Sudarshana has been handed the job.
The role of spin bowling coach was going to suffer the same fate with some candidates from overseas being shortlisted. Thankfully, the services of Piyal Wijetunga were retained eventually.
At the moment, Sri Lanka is over relying on foreign Coaches. Look at India, almost their entire coaching staff is Indian. All what you need is a good Head Coach like Mickey Arthur, a qualified physiotherapist and someone like Tom Moody to fill the role of Director Cricket. For most of the other positions you can be self-sufficient.
Like Vaas, there are other qualified individuals like Upul Chandana to be fielding coach, Roy Dias to function as Batting Coach and Mario Villavarayan to work as trainer. But we seem to think that only foreign coaches can deliver.
Some of our local coaches have been at the helm when the national cricket team reached new heights. Duleep Mendis had a long stint as coach in 1990s and he was successful. T.B. Khelgamuwa was the coach when Sri Lanka won their maiden Test match overseas in Napier. Roy Dias oversaw Sri Lanka’s maiden Test win in England in 1998 while Marvan Atapattu was the Head Coach during Sri Lanka’s best tour of England in 2014 where they won both the Test and ODI series.
Some of the investments that SLC have made over the years have gone down the drain. Ahead of the tour of West Indies in 2018, Sri Lanka had a two week residential camp at Pallekele. The board brought down Australian leg-spinner Peter Sleep all the way from Adelaide to train the lone leggie in the squad – Jeffrey Vandersay.
The need for a psychologist has been long felt in cricket circles and three years ago SLC brought down Dr. Phil Jauncey. Obviously he has a proven track record having worked with John Buchanan at Queensland. Several journalists were given an opportunity to talk to Dr. Jauncey and even some seasoned campaigners failed to grasp the message he was trying to pass on. Imagine the plight of the players. It must have been like Greek to them.
Countries like England and Australia have done well to hire expertise of retired greats on short term basis to help their players. England when they came to Galle in January brought in Jacuqes Kallis while when Trevor Bayliss was their Head Coach; he used Mahela Jayawardene as a batting consultant. The Aussies have done the same thing having used the expertise of Muttiah Muralitharan.
There is no harm in using former greats in short spells but those should be properly utilized. Peter Sleep to work with just one leg-spinner for two weeks did not make any sense. So does letting go of Rangana Herath.
