With the backing and blessings of Sports Minister Faizer Mustapha, former batsman Jehan Mubarak is all set to be appointed as Sri Lanka’s national team assistant batting coach, Cricket Age reliably learns.
Few weeks ago, Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) advertised for the national team’s assistant batting, fast bowling, spin bowling and fielding coaches.
According to sources, Nilantha Cooray name has almost been finalized for assistant spin bowling coach, as Sri Lanka head coach Chandika Hathurasingha has backed him. Now, for the assistant batting coach, Faizer is backing Jehan Mubarak.
As both Mubarak and Faizer belongs to the same Royal College Colombo, they shares a good rapport. Now, as Faizer has increasingly been involving in every aspect of the game at SLC, he has also started to bring his favorites in the system. It has learnt that Faizer insisted Mubarak to apply for the post and has instructed Asanka Gurusinha as well to consider him for the national team job.
The sad part is that till now, no other domestic batting Coach has applied for the post. When inquired, it emerged that they have already given up, thinking that with the backing of Faizer, Mubarak will easily get the job.
In last few months, all the appointments at SLC have been done with the influence of ‘interested parties’. The appointments of Harsha De Silva, Hashan Tillakaratne have completely demoralized Sri Lanka’s domestic coaches, who prefers to back their ability instead of going behind Minister, CEO of COO of the SLC.
As for as Mubarak is concerned, it’s not the first time that Faizer is backing him. Earlier this month, he was Named as Specialized Coach For One of the T20 Team in the ongoing local t20 league. That time also, SLC High performance manager Asanka Gurusinha anonymously appointed him on the behalf of Faizer.
A stylish left-handed batsman of his time, Mubarak played 13 Tests, 40 ODIs and 16 T20Is for Sri Lanka.
However, he has been considered as one of the least successful coach in Sri Lanka domestic cricket. He started the coaching from last year only with the Bloomfield. And, in his first year itself, Bloomfield was relegated to Tier B form Tier A. In addition, there are 14 clubs in Tier A, and amongst them, only Mubarak was selected for the SLC T20 league, whose team Bloomfield performed poorly last year. He was also associated with player-cum-coach for Mas Activa, but failed miserably there as well.
