Sri Lanka Cricket has made its first blunder which is unlikely to be the last as A team coach Avishka Gunawardena has been taken out and relegated to the ranks of a junior coach.
Gunawardena has now been made the coach of what is being called the “Emerging Team” while Thilan Samaraweera has been made the Sri Lanka A team coach.
The move is one of the most unfathomable decisions as Gunawardena was probably the most successful A team coach the country ever had which is second only to the Sri Lanka coach.
During the last three years that Gunawardena handled the Sri Lanka A team, not a single series was lost with wins posted over the West Indies, Bangladesh and England A teams.
Gunawardena despite his results is also the lowest paid coach while Sri Lanka coach Chandika Hathurusinha gets 20 times more according to figures obtained by the media.
The Sunday Observer learns that Gunawardena had got into the bad books of Sri Lanka Cricket president Shammi Silva after he dropped a player from the team on poor form during the concluded Super Provincial Tournament.
The player was from the Colombo Cricket Club (CCC) where Silva holds a top position and was selected for the Western Province team that came under Gunawardena’s coaching.
Gunawardena, a hard-hitting batsman during his time, can take credit for shaping the careers of several players in the A team who successfully graduated into the Sri Lanka team.
The Sri Lanka A team is scheduled to tour India for a series of matches starting on May 20 with Samaraweera as the coach.
But questions have been raised whether Samaraweera is the right man for the job after he failed with the Sri Lanka team while working alongside Chandika Hathurusinha.
Gunawardena’s ouster and relegation was conveyed to him by Sri Lanka Cricket’s chief executive officer Ashley de Silva.
The current Sri Lanka Cricket administration was elected to office on pledges to clean-up a mess and the latest development puts them into an embarrassing situation with the opposite happening.