Rugby-mad Isipathana set to reach new heights in cricket
Pasindu Liyanaarachchi
Former D.S. Senanayake College cricketer Pasindu Liyanaarachchi’s philosophy of developing players and not follow the win-at-any-cost mentality adopted by school coaches is reaping dividends.
When he took over as head coach of Isipathana in June, they had stumbled to ten defeats including six on first innings to end up in eighth position in their group comprising nine teams and 28th out of the 36 teams the Under-19 division 1 tournament. Isipathana also suffered the ignominy of losing in all three formats to their traditional ‘big match’ rivals Thurstan.
However, Liyanaarachchi has turned around the cricket fortunes of rugby-mad Isipathana within a season by rejuvenating the mindset of the players and injecting self-belief to deliver results. Having lost their pride and their morale at a low ebb after a disappointing season, Liyanaarachchi organised attitude-changing campaigns for the players dispelling their doubts whilst instilling the need to think and play positive cricket. He arranged quality practice sessions, fitness sessions and recovery sessions to rebuild the team spirit. He also used technology such as video presentations for all his awareness programmes whilst introducing a note book for each player to record and update their statistics that will help the player to make a self-assessment of his own performance.
Though Liyanaarachchi could not bring Isipathana’s lost pride back to normalcy overnight due to the limited period he had since joining, he did a remarkable job to show a reasonable improvement as Isipathana did fairly well though they failed to make it to the second and final round of two-day competition. However, Isipathana’s overall rank improved from 28th to 24th this year and they came out with much improved performances in their big match before they got the better of Thurstan in the limited-over fixture after three years. Isipathana posted 200-plus totals in both innings of the big match for only the second occasion in the series.
“Batting was our key this season. Two players scored over 900 runs and another two over 600 runs. Players development is quite high. That’s the main reason. Isipathana also scored 350-plus runs two times. We had six wins including one outright against St. Benedict’s. Even though we lost three matches against St. Joseph’s, Royal and St. Aloysius, we played positive cricket,” said Liyanaarachchi.
Skipper Leshan Amarasinghe led from the front aggregating 975 runs with a top score of 159 against Maliyadeva and another against Maris Stella (106). Ravindu Rathnayake also contributed heavily with the bat scoring 917 runs with a top score of 162 against Wesley. He also scored another century against Maliyadeva and four fifties.
Thevindu Dickwella who had an aggregate of 669 runs was their star performer in the limited over match against Thurstan smashing a whirlwind 59-ball 101.
Left-arm leg-spinner Savindu Uthsara shone as an allrounder scoring 656 runs and capturing 53 wickets including two five-wicket hauls against St. Joseph’s and St. Benedict’s.
“Actually we have to promote junior cricket which is weak. Normally coaches go for victories not producing players. My aim is to produce players,” said Liyanaarachchi, a qualified ICC Level III coach who looked after second XI and started a third XI when he came under the wing of Josephian head coach Roger Wijesuriya for two and half seasons.
Liyanaarachchi with the big match winning Isipathana team
Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly made an interesting observation related to the role of an international coach in a TV show recently.
“Coaching in the international level does not exist. If a player needs coaching at the international level, he should not be there in the first place,” he said.
“At international level, a coach is not there to teach players how to bowl or bat but to manage and help the captain with the strategy for the games. However, the role of a coach at school level is completely a different one,” said Liyanaarachchi, who began his coaching career at junior first at Mahanama College, Colombo in the 2015/16 season and then at St. Joseph’s before achieving his ambition of being head coach of a Colombo school.
He had his fair share of success at St. Josephs implementing certain strategies with the most far-sighted one being storing resources for future use after unearthing talent from lower tiers. Liyanaarachchi was able to form not only a second XI but also a third XI to obtain replacements for the college First XI team whenever it is necessary. This move not only helped their first XI to be stronger than never before becoming Under-19 two-day champions in successive years (2017/18 and 2018/19), but also forming a squad of over 50 players who were capable of playing at the highest level and doing exceedingly well in Under-13 and Under-15 tournaments.
“Success cannot happen overnight. One has to be patient to achieve results,” said Liyanaarachchi, who is set to take Isipathana cricket to new heights.