Sri Lanka Cricket has appointed Former First Class Cricketer Hemantha Devapriya as the manager of the U19 Team, Cricket Age reliably learns. In July, The Sri Lanka U19 Team is scheduled to play a series against India.
Few days ago, Devapriya resigned as Women’s Team Coach, after embarrassing defeat against Thailand in the recently concluded Asia Cup tournament in Malaysia. Sri Lanka suffered a shock four-wicket defeat to Thailand in what turned out to be a low-scoring last-ball thriller. They finished fourth in the competition with two wins and three defeats.
The 60-year-old Devapriya has had a long stint with Sri Lanka Cricket having joined the board in 1999 as the coach of the ‘A’ team. He has held several positions within SLC since then from being Coach of the Development Squad to coaching Provincial teams apart from being ‘A’ team coach. In between, he had a couple of stints with First Class teams like NCC and Bloomfield.
A promising wicketkeeper-batsman, Devapriya’s chances of representing Sri Lanka vanished when he joined Test captain Bandula Warnapura on the rebel tour to South Africa in October 1982, a mere nine months after Sri Lanka’s inaugural Test match. All players were handed bans of 25 years each. Eventually, in 1993, the ban was lifted.
Devapriya played a couple of seasons of First Class cricket for Colts before moving on to coaching.
