Sanath Jayasuriya named coach of Sri Lanka cricket team ahead of home series against India

Former Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya is set to be the new head coach of the Sri Lanka men’s team ahead of the upcoming limited-overs series against India, news agency AFP reported on Monday.
Chris Silverwood had stepped down as the Sri Lanka head coach
following his team’s forgettable T20 World Cup campaign, where they crashed out in the group stage.

Silverwood took over in April 2022 and enjoyed immediate success, as Sri Lanka won the T20 Asia Cup later that year. However, in the 2024 T20 World Cup recently, the island nation managed to win just one match, beating Netherlands by 83 runs. Sri Lanka finished in third place with three points, behind South Africa and Bangladesh.

Jayasuriya revealed that he had been approached by Sri Lanka Cricket to take over as head coach of the national team ahead of the series against India that gets underway on 27 July, as well as Sri Lanka’s tour of England scheduled for August. India are scheduled to play three T20Is and as many ODIs in Sri Lanka.

“I have been asked to take over coaching and I am happy to do it,” the 55 year-old told AFP.

Jayasuriya, a former Test and ODI captain, had also been a national selector. He is to take over the team after the end of the ongoing T20 Lanka Premier League on 21 July.

Jayasuriya represented Sri Lanka 586 times across the three formats of the game, hitting 42 centuries and taking 440 wickets. He played his last international in 2011. Former England coach Silverwood, 49, quit for “personal reasons”, according to Sri Lanka Cricket, who thanked him for his “valuable contributions during his tenure”.

They reached the final of the 50-over Asia Cup in 2023. But they failed to make it to the knockout stages of the T20 World Cup in 2022 and last year’s 50-over World Cup.

With inputs from AFP