Two SL cricket coaches participate at ICC Academy coaching programme

By Dhammika Ratnaweera

 

The International Cricket Council offered an important opportunity to two of Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) ‘Coach Educators’ to take part in their ‘Resource Panel’ to conduct the ICC Academy Global Level 3 Course of 2019, which was held in Dubai.

“This is the first time Sri Lankans received this chance from the ICC and it has been an honour to Sri Lankan coaches “said Chief Operations officer of the Sri Lanka Cricket Jerom Jayaratna. Jayaratna who was the former Head of the SLC coaches Department said that the coaches’ education is a very important area to develop and SLC already do these programs to uplift the coaches all over the country. He further said that the coaches haven’t proper qualifications and coach educator’s job is of more value to them added Jayaratna who also the consultant coach of the present National cricket team.

Heshan De Mel, the Head of Coach Education Unit of the SLC and  Tharaka Samaratunga; a Coach Educator at the SLC were in Dubai, participated in this program, which started on the 01^st November and ended on last Wednesday (06).

De Mel was  engaged in the workshop on a monitoring capacity and overseeing the program, in collaboration with the ICCA Management, while Samaratunga was responsible for delivering ‘The Mental Skills’ session.

De Mel is a qualified Cricket Australia Level 1 and 2 Coach, qualified as an ACC Level 3 Coach and in addition, he is also a Cricket Australia Educator of Level 1 and 2. Meanwhile, Samaratunga is a qualified ICC Global Level 1, 2 and 3 coach, qualified as a Cricket Australia Level 2 coach and in addition is an NSSU Coach Developer. Samarathnga was a  coach of the Sharjah Desert Cubs  Cricket Academy before he joined to the SLC.

Heshan de Mel said this opportunity clearly demonstrates the quality and the depth of knowledge, SLC’s coach Educators has an internationally recognized coach developer.

  Heshan de Mel the former Sebastianites cricketer and Tharaka Samaratunga the former Bloomfield cricketer presently doing a great job as coach educators at SLC. Samrathunga also said this opportunity was great and all participants got real value out of our inputs to this program.

 Australia, England, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, USA, Uganda, UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia participants got a chance to take part this value program conducted by ICC.