Head coaches Wood and Ferdinands to work with SL men's cricket team on 'rotational basis'

Colombo, Oct 30 Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has said that newly appointed national coaches Julian Wood and Rene Ferdinands will work alongside existing support staff members Thilina Kandamby and Piyal Wijetunge on a rotational basis with the men’s side.

The move signals a shift in SLC’s high-performance strategy, with coaching roles now shared across national squads, including age-group and women’s teams. “All these coaches, they are not being specified to say that they would be working with the national team. They work as the national coaches, but that does not mean they should work (solely) with the (men's) national team.

"Across the board, there are national teams, no? So on a rotational basis, tour by tour, we will decide who will be joining the teams. That's how the high-performance centre operates now,” SLC CEO Ashley de Silva was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo on Thursday.

The rotational model of coaches is rare in international cricket and mirrors South Africa’s structure where coaches like Imran Khan and Paul Adams are deployed flexibly across squads. SLC’s version will see Wood, Ferdinands, Kandamby, and Wijetunge rotate based on tour requirements, with decisions made by the executive committee.

"They work in the organisation, (it is) not that their contracts have been terminated. It doesn't matter wherever they have been assigned; they should be prepared to work. Even they (Wood and Ferdinands) have been designated the same way, so they would be working across the board. Depending on the tours, we, the ExCo (executive committee) will decide who should go on tour," added de Silva.

Wood, a power-hitting specialist, impressed players during a short-term programme earlier this year and has since been signed on for a one-year contract. Ferdinands, a biomechanics expert, brings experience from stints with New Zealand Cricket (NZC) and India’s National Cricket Academy (now called BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru).

Kandamby has been Sri Lanka’s batting coach since December 2023, while Wijetunge is a long-serving spin coach since 2006. Sri Lanka’s next assignment is an ODI series in Pakistan in November, followed by a T20I tri-series involving Zimbabwe. SLC also said no decision has yet been made on which coaches will travel with the squad.

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