Sri Lanka Cricket has snubbed Sports Minister Harin Fernando and rendered his desire to do away with white foreign coaches absurd and decided to enlist the services of Australian Craig Howard as its spin bowling coach.
Howard will get down to immediate business and take over the Sri Lanka team’s spin bowlers for the ODI home series against Afghanistan starting on Friday.
Ministers should not interfere – SLC President Shammi Silva disregards Sports Minister Harin Fernando’s wishes and recruits another foreign coach
Sri Lanka Cricket believes it has hooked in a big fish to pull the team out of an abyss, after a shoddy performance at the World Cup two months ago where the team finished ninth out of ten countries in the fray.
“A qualified level three coach Craig has held a 12-year stint as the consultant coach of Cricket Australia (CA). He has worked on CA’s spin tweaks, head of spin bowling for pathways and national teams,” SLC said in a media statement on Monday.
Foreign ‘suddha” cricket coaches are ineffective – we already have too many white coaches
But SLC will also find itself in conflict with Minister Fernando who is seen as a man towing the line with corruption riddled cricket chiefs including the big fish Shammi Silva that Parliament and the entire country wanted dismissed.
Fernando soon after taking over the job from the sacked Roshan Ranasinghe said last month that too many “white coaches” have been employed by SLC.
“We have too many white coaches and our players don’t understand the language and say they have to ask somebody what was said to them,” Minister Fernando said last month.
Howard’s appointment is a two-year contract starting February 1.
