Former Australian opening batsman and coach Geoff Marsh who is in Sri Lanka watching his son Shaun belting the Lankan bowlers is likely to take over the reins as the country’s next coach soon after Australian tour of Sri Lanka.
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| The prospective Lankan coach Geoff Marsh and his daughter-in-law to be – Amanda beaming after Shaun Marsh’s debut ‘ton’ at Pallekelle, yesterday. (Pic by Mangala Weerasekera) |
Rumesh Ratnayake who is the interim coach at present has ruled himself out of the job to concentrate on his Asian Cricket Council assignment as a Development Officer.
Until last week there was speculation about former South African coach Graham Ford taking over the job, but, a six-month notice clause in his present Middlesex contract prevented him from taking over the job in Sri Lanka.Marsh who coached the Australians to their 1999 World Cup win also has acted as one of the cricketing nation’s selectors and also as the national coach of Zimbabwe before moving on to Pune in the Indian Premier League.
The other two contenders who are left in the fray are former Sri Lanka shadow coach Chandika Haturusinghe who is the present New South Wales Assistant coach and former Sri Lanka assistant coach Paul Farbrace.
Marsh had a series of discussions with the Lankan interim management and the cricket committee last week and also visited the Lankan training facilities.
However, the job at hand for Marsh would be a daunting one. At present Sri Lanka is going through a crisis with an insider who opted to remain anonymous describing the situation as grave.
He said as a direct result of the disharmony among the team rankers captain T.M. Dilshan seems to have lost confidence and that is reflecting with his poor form with the bat where he has scored only 20 runs in his last three innings following the 193 he scored against England at Lord’s.
However, even if the selectors are compelled to drop Dilshan as a result of his poor form, the insider said that the other seniors – Thilan Samaraweera and Prasanna Jayawardena have declined the job while former captains Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena also would not come back to take over the captaincy even if they are offered.
At the same time the cricket hierarchy feels that promising Angelo Mathews should not be rushed into the position as captain as he has the time to study intricacies of the position and they have already given him the responsibility as vice captain – added the
insider. |
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