Former cricketer turned commentator Russel Arnold launched his “Chilling with Russel” YouTube channel yesterday with former players Sanath Jayasuriya and Tillakaratne Dilshan participating as guests.
During the productive discussion on current issues in Sri Lanka Cricket, Dilshan, a former skipper himself, questioned the the thinking behind employing Australian Tom Moody as SLC’s Director of Cricket.
“We are talking about developing cricket from the grassroots level. We have appointed a committee comprising for ex players for this committee. They are some of our best former cricketers who have a broad knowledge about this subject.” Dilshan said
“If they cannot develop our cricket structure, how can a foreigner like Tom Moody do it ? I believe that this has to be done by someone who knows throughly about local cricket, not someone from Australia” he added
The former captain also questioned the thinking behind paying an amount of US $ 1900 per day. He suggests that these funds can be instead used to develop grassroots of our cricket structure.
“Moody can be a very good coach, so he can be appointed as coach, but development of cricket should be handled by our own experts. That’s why we have the committee already appointed. We can save a lot of money if we get our decisions correct” Dilshan went on to say.
Adding to the discussion, Russel Arnold said that some of our good domestic players are moving to Australia and England to play club cricket in these countries. He said that if we can retain these players we can get their help to develop grassroots of local cricket.
Adding a comment on Local coaches Sanath Jayasuriya said,
“Why are we letting Rangana Herath coach a different country ? Why can’t we employ him as a coach ? If the problem is the money, how come we pay more fees to foreign coaches? We have to treat both local and foreign coaches the same”
Russel Arnold also supported Jayasuriya’s views.
“I have be arguing about this from the beginning. Why are we treating local coaches differently? This is a real problem. With this kind of treatment we are losing very good resources” Arnold said.
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