20 April 2018 11:18 am
Asanka Gurusinha will take over as Chief Cricket Operations Officer from May 15, Sri Lanka Cricket said.
Currently employed as Cricket Manager and also as a selector, Gurusinha will now be in charge of Sri Lanka Cricket’s Brain Center--a facility to collect and analyse player data and also the High Performance Center based at Kettarama and will functions as overall head of cricket operations in the country.
"There are people at the national level getting injured, they take longer than we expect to recover, so our rehabilitation situation is not ideal where some guys take three-four months to come back. In High Performance we need a top qualified coach and we're happy Gurusinha has agreed to take over."
The Australian based former Sri Lanka World Cup winning cricketer was enrolled as Cricket Manager in February 2017 and was later appointed to the national selection committee.
He said his top priority is to help head coach Chandika Hathurusingha in preparing Sri Lanka team to win the coveted World Cup title in 2019 in England.
“The coach needs at least a squad of 25 players who he could pick at any given time. My job is to try and create that 25 players for Chandika so that he doesn’t have to worry about anything and pick any players out of the squad provided,” Gurusinha said . “That’s going to be the path.
One of the biggest challenge, the 51-year-old will face is to keep the players free from injuries. Sri Lanka’s biggest nemesis in recent months have been injuries with several fast bowlers including Dushmantha Chameera, Nuwan Pradeep, Suranga Lakmal injured.
“Injuries have been a major issue for us over the last several months,” he said. “Last three weeks I have been spending lot of time in understanding all of that, by talking with Simon (Willis) and physios, doing lots of research and talking to my old physio, Alex Contonrie and getting his thoughts on what we need to do. The board has also spoken to lot of others as well. So we are trying to see what we can do. As you said if we want to win the World Cup, we need a fit team.
Gurusinha, a Level III qualified coach said going into the World Cup, they might implement certain strategies including resting key players for longer period of time to keep players fit and ready for the national duty.