Hours after the national team suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Galle test against England on Friday, the Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) has once again succumbed to the powerful coach Chandika Hathurasingha, as team manager Charith Senanayake has resigned from his post with immediate effect after knowing the conspiracy against him, Cricket Age reliably learns.
On November 9th, Cricket Age had published that Hathurusingha has complained against Senanayake and demanded his removal from the SLC.
Cricket Age understands that on the fourth day of Galle test, SLC CEO Ashley De Silva and competent authority Kamal Padmasiri tried to convince Senanayake by asking him to stay till the end of the ongoing test series. However, after knowing that Hathurusingha had complained SLC that his presence as manager is detrimental to the team, Senanayake refused and offered his resignation on principle ground.
Further, Senanayake made it clear that even after fulfilling all the responsibilities with utmost dedication and professionalism for the last three series, if Hathurusingha doesn’t want him in the setup, then there is no logic to stay in this toxic environment.
It has also learnt that Hathurusingha was so desperate to see Senanayake’s back, that he demanded Ashley De Silva to remove him midway through the test match. However, it couldn’t happen, as Ashley De Silva was in UK. However, when Ashley returned to Sri Lanka, he easily succumbed to Hathurusingha and told Senanayake to return to the A team after England series. However, Senanayake refused to bow down to SLC dirty politics and immediately offered his resignation.
This particular incident also shows how incompetent SLC present management is right now. It is noteworthy that as soon as Hathurusingha arrived Sri Lanka as a Messiah, he has regularly been sidelining domestic coaches and administrators. Few months ago, he unsuccessfully plotted against Sri Lanka A team coach Avishka Gunawardana, as he had wanted to bring his loyalist Thilina Kandamby. During this period, Sri Lanka was embarrassingly defeated in the ODI series by South Africa and England at home and were thrashed by minnows like Afghanistan in the Asia Cup. Now, Sri Lanka has lost a test match at Galle, which was considered their fortress!
Despite this poor showing, SLC has no courage to ask Hathurusingha, even though he is getting paid staggering 6 million rupees and has given all the decision making powers. Instead, SLC is allowing Hathurusingha into a monster, who, in the end, will ruin everything!
