Yet another series. Yet another embarrassing defeat! For Sri Lanka, it has become a norm now! On Monday morning, when entire Sri Lanka was hoping for a miracle at Canberra, the batting surrendered once again, that too without any fight!
It was all too familiar for Sri Lanka! No batsmen could manage a score over fifty. Yet again, Sri Lanka could not drag the match to fifth day! The losing margin of 366 runs suggest, it was an mismatch. It’s like, only Australia were playing for a win!
So, the most obvious question after another dreadful series loss, is that has time arrived for Sri Lanka’s high profile Coach Chandika Hathurusingha to resign gracefully, before facing the humiliation of being sacked?
Hailed as a ‘Messiah’ in December 2017, Hathurusingha has turned a ‘curse’ in February 2019.
On January 16, Cricket Age had exposed how Hathurasingha charged a whopping 60,000 USD from the SLC for just an assessment report of the national team. More shockingly, as per his contract, Hathurusingha is entitled to get 1,20,000 USD in a year for submitting two reports!
After that expose by Cricket Age, entire local media, fans, supporters came to know how Hathurasingha has been looting Sri Lanka Cricket!
However, forget about money, the bigger issue is that whether Sri Lanka is getting benefited under Hathurusingha or not?
Cricket Age has the access of Hathurusingha’s contract. And it shows that Hathurusingha has completely failed in his ‘Job Function’ As a national Coach of Sri Lanka!
Planning and strategizing for the national team : One of most important job function of Hathurasingha is to plan and strategies for the team. This is the area, where Hathurusingha has failed miserably. In last one year, Sri Lanka, in all three formats, could never played with a strategy or planning. As recent as in the just concluded Second test, Australia were reeling at 28/3. However, after that captain Dinesh Chandimal could not capitalise the situation and allowed Australia to dominate with bizzare bowling changes and negative field settings.
Hathurusingha’s another job function says he is responsible for drawing game plans during matches. These days, Sri Lanka hardly has any game plan against any opposition! Even former Sri Lanka pacer Prabhath Nissanka expressed his frustration how Sri Lanka bowlers allowed Australia to make a comeback with short bowling stuff! Hathurusingha had no plan, no strategy, when Travis Head and Co. started to pile on runs!
Preparing the Sri Lanka squad for tours, both physically and mentally : This is another area, where millions dollars paid coach failed miserably! It has become a pattern Now, in ever series, tournament, three to four Sri Lanka players get injured – before the series or during the series. Even in the two test match series against Australia, fast bowlers Suranga Lakmal, Lahiru Kumara, Dushmantha Chameera were ruled out with the injuries! There is no mental toughness in the players as well. Most of the batsmen were unable to handle the match situation and threw their wickets away by playing false strokes!
Guiding team spirit among the players and motivating them to be result oriented : The lesser we talk about this is better! This is the area where team is lacking the most. As allrounder Thisara Perera’s leaked letter has already exposed the dirty politics within the team to the world cricket, there is no team spirit in the dressing room right now. All the players are playing for themselves and there is no unity or willingness to win for the country, as per Perera’s letter itself.
That’s why, the departure of Hathurasingha seems most logical thing for Sri Lanka Cricket. For his own goodwill, credibility and future, Hathurusingha need to realize that the time has arrived for him to resign gracefully!
