Sri Lankan men’s team had new appointments made to their coaching staff on April 17, with their great left-arm pacer Chaminda Vaas joining the Chris Silverwood led backroom team in the interim bowling coach’s capacity and former batter Naveed Nawaz playing full-time assistant to the new head coach.
Vaas, Sri Lanka’s greatest-ever fast-bowler, regains the bowling coach’s duties after having enjoyed several stints with the side in the past 10 years following his last international outing back in 2009.
The 48-year-old played 111 Tests with 355 wickets and 322 ODIs with 400 wickets, apart from six scalps in his six T20I outings for the national team in an illustrious career that saw him make up for the absence of a robust, world-class pacer in the spin-dominated Sri Lankan bowling attacks across conditions.
Interestingly, he is being reappointed at the bowling coach’s post after not being retained at it in December last year by Sri Lanka Cricket. He missed Sri Lanka’s most recent international assignment in March on the disastrous tour of India after spending most of the former coach Mickey Arthur’s stint as a helping hand.
For Nawaz, it’s a jump from being the guide at the junior level to providing adequate inputs to the senior men at the highest level.
He was the coach of Bangladesh’s U19 side that won the World Cup two years back in South Africa, a result that would’ve played a part in his latest appointment with the national side. Nawaz played one Test and three ODIs for Sri Lanka, being a veteran first-class batter in the 1990s and early 2000s.
SLC have also roped in Piyal Wijetunge as spin bowling coach and Manoj Abeywickrama as the fielding coach for the two-Test series in Bangladesh this May. Notably, Vaas’ appointment is also only for the Bangladesh assignment, while it is expected that he may come on board for a longer stint with the side. Nawaz, like Silverwood, is on board for the next two years.
Sri Lanka will be resuming their World Test Championship campaign with two Test matches in Chattogram and Dhaka from May 15-19 and 23-27, respectively.
