Mickey Arthur has been officially confirmed as Sri Lanka’s Consultant Head Coach. The 51-year old coach from South Africa will take over the reins of the national cricket team from Rumesh Ratnayake who was an interim appointment throughout the limited-overs tourney in Pakistan. He had been appointed after Chandika Hathurusinghe was released in a scenario where the Sri Lankan Sports Ministry was immensely disappointed with the results garnered by the national team in H1 2019.
This is Mickey Arthur’s 4th big-time international cricket coaching position. He has coached South Africa, Pakistan and Australia in the past. He was released as Pakistan’s coach earlier in 2019 after failing to qualify for the semi-finals in the ICC World Cup 2019. Throughout his tenure as coach, however, Pakistan managed to win the Champions Trophy in 2017 while also taking the top spot in the ICC T20I and Test rankings. Grant Flower is the batting coach of the Sri Lankan national team while also being the head coach of the Sri Lanka A team from 6th December, 2019, onwards. Both of them have worked in similar positions for the Pakistan national team in the past as well. Flower has also resigned recently as the head coach of the Rangpur Riders Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) side. The Sri Lanka Cricket Board has also announced that ex-Australia and Melbourne Renegades coach, David Saker, will be the new bowling coach of the team. Shane McDermott has been appointed as the new fielding coach as well while Tim McCaskill is the Head of National Cricket Development. The Chief Cricket Operations for SLC is Jerome Jayaratne. The first assignment of the new team will be the 2-Test Pakistan tour which gets underway on 11th December, 2019.