SL’s hunt for eloped coaches continues as Farbrace’s name unearths

By Dhammika Ratnaweera

Former Sri Lankan head cricket coach and then England’s deputy coach to Trevor Bayliss, Paul Farbrace’s is tipped to be the leading candidate to join Sri Lankan Cricket as next head cricket coach.

Sri Lanka’s sports minister Harin Fernando, who had asked the SLC to overhaul country’s cricket coaching staff after the ICC World Cup, is believed to having direct discussions with former Sri Lanka cricket coach Farbrace who is currently the director of sports for Warwickshire County.

All these developments had come out in the wake of that some of the Sri Lankan senior cricketers had fallen out with the current coach Chandika Hathurusinghe, who was is also a recalled coach after leaving Sri Lanka coaching staff earlier.

Farbrace, 52, left a bad taste in many mouths when he vacated Sri Lanka’s Head Coach position before his contract expires to join England as an assistant to Trevor Bayliss in 2014, just before Sri Lanka’s tour of England.

The timing of Farbrace, in particular, was worrying as he joined England a mere three weeks before Sri Lanka undertook a tour of the UK. Farbrace is currently Sports Director of English county Warwickshire. Farbrace was the head coach when Sri Lanka won the t-20 world cup in Bangladesh 2014.

Meanwhile, SLC Secretary Mohan de Silva said that the sports minister had already ordered to change the coaches after the completion of the Bangladesh tour and the SLC Exco meeting will discuss this issue seriously this week. However present coach Chandika Hathurusinghe said that no one had yet discussed anything about his future or the contract with the SLC and was continuing his normal duties with his staff. He has to do another 16 months according to the contact with SLC.