Cricket-Farbrace resigns as Sri Lanka coach, set for England role
Sri Lanka head coach Paul Farbrace has resigned and is set to take up the position of assistant coach of England, Sri Lanka Cricket said on Tuesday.
Farbrace made it known to Sri Lanka Cricket that he no longer wanted to continue with his present position after being offered the chance to become assistant to England’s newly-appointed coach Peter Moores.
He had served only four months of his two-year contract with Sri Lanka Cricket during which time he led them to the World Twenty20 title in Bangladesh.
“We had talks with Paul and tried to convince him to stay because of the valuable contribution he has made to Sri Lanka cricket during his short tenure,” Sri Lanka Cricket secretary Nishantha Ranatunga said.
“Paul wanted time till today to reach a final decision and he has tended his resignation.”
Farbrace’s name was linked to Moores when the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) began interviewing a list of candidates to succeed Andy Flower.
He had returned to England for the Easter weekend after Sri Lanka’s success in the World T20 and although not among the candidates was subsequently interviewed by ECB.
“The (executive committee) will have to sit down and discuss how best we can find a suitable replacement for Farbrace for the tour to England which starts on the first week of May,” said Ranatunga.
Current batting coach Marvan Atapattu, who applied for the head coach’s job with Farbrace, seems the likely choice.
(Reuters)
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Perhaps ECB thought that the upcoming series in few weeks with SL can be better fought by employing who has the first hand knowledge of strengths and weaknesses of SL players.
Thank god, finally SL has the chance to play cricket in the UK not in winter! Hope the SL players will make the most of it and leave some memories behind and Dilshan will use his head instead of relying on brashness.
Glad, I am not the only one think so. From Cricinfo:
….. When asked what he thought of the ECB approaching Sri Lanka’s head coach with a job offer, without consulting SLC first, Ranatunga’s reply was docile. “That’s another board’s issue,” he said. “It would be unfair of us to comment on that.”
It is a revealing choice of words, because to many, “unfair” would be having a man who has worked intensively with Sri Lanka’s players across all three formats and been privy to every scrap of long-term strategy the team has devised, suddenly move to an enemy camp with whom Sri Lanka will do battle next month. “Unfair” might be being left so far out of the loop that, hours after Farbrace had been strongly linked with the assistant-coach position in the English press, SLC’s CEO was rubbishing those reports as “speculation and rumour”.
“Unfair” may be choosing a well-regarded second XI county coach to fit a slim budget, only to have him bought back months later, after Sri Lanka had facilitated a considerable rise in his value. That Farbrace assisted in the winning of the World T20 and Asia Cup is almost indisputable, but the groundwork for those triumphs had been done long before his ten weeks with the top side. Sri Lanka’s limited-overs tournament record is testament to that. It is believed Peter Moores specifically requested Farbrace be installed as his deputy, but it seems unlikely he would have done the same, if Farbrace had remained at his county job.
SLC cannot afford to voice their frustration at the ECB in public, because at present it has the weakest grip on its future of the top eight teams – among the Full Members, only Zimbabwe is worse off. SLC took a surprisingly principled stance on the Big Three takeover in January and February, and now it has the most grovelling to do. Pakistan provided the other abstention in Singapore, but their finances are in less disarray, and they had been surviving without India tours in any case. A much larger population, and hence revenue-generation capability, also helps.
Of course, this decision has been influenced by Cameron, the king of Human Rights.