Sri Lanka cricket coach Mickey Arthur has revealed that Sri Lanka’s recent tour to England was one of the toughest tours he has been part of in his 12-years as an international coach.
He said this was so due to so many other incidents going on around the tour, such as the stand-off between the players and the board around contracts which had not been resolved at the time.
However, the coach acknowledged certain positive developments that had taken place in the team despite the difficult period.
Arthur pointed out that Kusal Janith Perera had led the team very well in very trying times.
He further said the team’s quick bowling attack was fairly good, adding that even though there were spinners, the quick bowlers came through, which was really exciting.
Full Remarks:
one of the toughest tours I’ve been on in my 12 years as an international coach, just in the sense that there was so much going on around the tour. There was obviously still the stand-off between the players and the board around contracts which hasn’t been resolved. Not wanting to make an excuse around that, there was a lot of instability there.
We took a very, very young squad that we wanted to build with for the next couple of years but the three batsmen central to that unfortunately went walkabout in Durham and we lost our number one, four and five. That didn’t help either. It was really tough.
The positives I’d take out of it, I thought Kusal Janith [Perera] led the team very, very well in very trying times and I thought our quick bowling attack was fairly good which was great. We know we’ve got the spinners but to see some of our quicks come through was really, really exciting.- Mickey Arthur