Danushka Gunathilake pulled off a screamer to dismiss Eoin Morgan

Danushka Gunathilake [Classic Catches] vs England, 2016 from UppercuT on Vimeo.

The Mathews Show vs England, 2015

Angelo Mathews 73 & 2 for 22 vs England, 2016 from UppercuT on Vimeo.

The Super Coach Saga & Sri Lanka: A Fact Check

In the super league..?

"...Move him from mid wicket to backward point!...",

shouted the coach from the pavilion. Soon enough, skipper obliged and I was running across to backward point. Coach shouted out a few more field changes, in the process we went on to win the match by 86 runs, while I, at backward point, managed to hang on to(with my dear life) a catch flying off a fierce cut shot, to avoid nose surgery.
He was the manager, batting coach, fielding coach, bowling coach, trainer and would set the field most of the time. He was no different from the coach of the opposition or any other team we played against.

That was under 15 division two cricket, year 2002.

Sri Lankan fans and critics talk highly of four coaches who have "done well" with Sri Lankan team; Dav Whatmore, Tom Moody, Trevor Bayliss and Graham Ford and regard them as "super coaches" who can flip a team's fortunes(from bad to good, never from good to bad as per the fans) under their watch.
One trait all four of them shared apart from being part of successful Sri Lankan world cup campaigns is, all four of them were relatively unknown as mainstream coaches until they took up head coach position in Sri Lankan set up. Was it really their genius that made Sri Lanka the force they are today(before the end of 2015 anyway)? It is worth a taking a look at what they actually signed up for when they agree to take up the top job in Sri Lankan cricket.

Era of the super-coach

Core of five: Ranatunga, de Silva, Thillakaratne, Mahanama, Gurusinghe

When Dav Whatmore took up the job in 1995 thanks to generous donations from Cricket Australia, Sri Lanka was on cusp of breaking in to the elite circles of the cricket world. The core of the team was already established in the form of Ranatunga, de Silva, Thillakaratne, Mahanama and Gurusinghe. Rest of the numbers were made up by young Jayasuriyas, Muralitharans and Vass, who themselves would later go on be all time Sri Lankan legends. There is a popular school of thoughts that revolutionary Sanath-Kalu opening combination was the brain child of Whatmore. Apparently the real story is a different one:

After leaving the Sri Lankan top post, Whatmore returned for a second stint with Sri Lanka from 1999 to 2003. However he couldn't replicate the same success with Jayasuriya's team, that he had with Ranatunga's team in 1996.

-Fast forward to 2005;

Post '90s: New foundations: Jayasuriya,Muralitharan,Vaas + [Mahela & Sanga]

Tom Moody takes over the reigns; Jayasuriya, Muralitharan and Vaas all in their prime. Add to that one Mahela Jayawardane and one Kumar Sangakkara took their first steps of the path to greatness in 2005. Sri Lanka would go on to scale great heights(highlight being the finalist of World Cup 2007) in world cricket on the backs of these five core pillars, even after Moody's departure. Sri Lanka finally managed to find a replacement for the Ranatunga's 96 team's core of de Silva, Tillakaratne, Mahanama & Gurusinghe. However Sri Lanka would still go on to loose first ever Test series to Pakistan on home turf since gaining Test status and a Test victory on Australian soil remained elusive.

-2009;

Dawn of the era of the "Big THREE"

After the departure of Moody and his coaching staff. Sri Lanka Cricket brought on another Australian in form of Trevor Bayliss. 2005 Sri Lankan team's core players were still in tact, although Jaysuriya's prowess started declining, the void was fast filled by the meteoric rise of Thillakaratne Dilshan the opener, upon which Sri Lanka's successful campaigns of World T20 2009 and ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 were based on. Dilshan would go on to be the top scorer in both world cup editions by some distance. Sri Lanka also witnessed the decline of Chaminda Vaas, but simultaneously the rise of unorthodox Lasith Malinga who would go on to create his own legacy spearheading the Sri Lankan as well as Mumbai Indians' bowling attacks bringing great success to both teams. Kumar Sangakkara's team would go on to win their first ever ODI series in Australia largely thanks to a freak 8th wicket partnership between future skipper Angelo Mathews and Lasith Malinga. Test wins on Indian and Australian soil remained elusive to Sri Lanka.

-Fast foward to 2012;

The new (core of) FIVE: Mahela, Sanga, Dilshan, Malinga, Herath

Due to some heavy in-team politics, leadership of Sri Lankan team was somewhat in turmoil, but the core of the team(which now has again revamped with additions of Dilshan and Malinga) remained strongly in tact. Graham Ford took over with Mahela Jayawardane back for his second stint as the skipper. By this time, Jayawardana and Sangakkara had so much authority in the Sri Lankan dressing room that position of head coach was basically a back office figure in the dressing room. Ford himself revealed in a recent interview that "senior players" pretty much ran the show in his first stint with Sri Lanka:

 - http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1023539.html

Under Ford, Sri Lanka would go on as far as another final in World T20 2012, but Test wins in Australia still remained elusive.

Those excerpts from the Ford interview sums up pretty much the role of a coach in a professional setup these days, especially one that includes a strong "core" of experienced players. Most players do not need technical amendments since they are chose to represent an international side because their technique is already good enough. What they need is as Ford puts it "facilitating".

An outsider can view this as; relatively unknown coaches with little to show on their CVs getting a piggy back ride on the success of high quality Sri Lankan players(while they were produced from then system). Of course a coach with a successful World Cup campaign on their resume would find it easier to obtain lucrative coaching deals than a coach of a domestic state championship team as three of the above mentioned former Sri Lankan coaches found out (Whatmore,Moody and Bayliss all went on to coach IPL teams banking on their success with Sri Lanka).

This point is further proven when considering Whatmore's, Moody's and Bayliss's failures in country and IPL/BBL assignments they took on immediately after leaving Sri Lanka.; Whatmore never ahieved the feats he achieved with Sri Lanka(not even with Sri Lanka itself again in second stint). Moody had a disastrous IPL campaign with Kings XI Punjab and Bayliss had a similar below par BBL campaign with Sydney. Neither Moody nor Bayliss tasted success again until they hand picked a bunch of players to be the "core" of the respective teams that they went on to win championships with. (Moody changed franchise and Bayliss got a clean sheet Kolkata Knight Riders).

Bangladesh story

Five strong... Sounds familiar?

One of the popular counter arguments to above mentioned point, is recent resurgence of Bangladesh under Chandika Hathurusinghe. Fans/critics point to Hathurusinghe "unlocking" something in Bangladesh cricket while conveniently ignoring one key factor. Actually five key factors: Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiq ur Rahim, Shakib ul Hasan, Mahmadullah Riyad and Mashrafe Mortaza. Sounds familiar? It's THAT "core of five" which all Whatmore, Moody, Bayliss and Ford had with Sri Lanka. If your really look closely you will see that Tamim, Mushfiq, Shakib and Masharafe all in fact have been around in international cricket way longer than Kohlis, Smiths, Mathews, Williamsons, Starcs, Roots(who are in forefront and face of world cricket today). So with that kind of "experience" to go with their skills, should Bangladesh's eventual(they have been a test country since 1999) rise in world cricket be credited to some kind of magic wand waving by Hathurusinghe?

Fan favorite

Another aspect is 'super-coach' fans like to pick and choose their fan favorites(much like they do with players). There were so much praise heaped on Ray Jennings when South African under-19s won the world cup in 2014 and everyone was ready to do the same for Rahul Dravid when India under-19s played West Indies under 19s in final of the most recent edition of ICC Under 19 World Cup this year(2016), but to everyone's shock it was West Indies under-19s who trumped over Dravid's under-19s. Suddenly there was no talk of how a "great coach makes a team great"... why? because it wasn't the 'fan favorite' coach that won the world cup. It was Graeme West a coach that does not even have a ESPNcricinfo profile trumped a fan-favorite coach in Dravid.

It's the very same logic they apply when they ignore other coaches like Gary Sobers, John Dyson, Roy Dias who also coached Sri Lanka when the team was not comparatively stable, lacking experience or in transition. I'll be surprised if the super coach fans are even aware that above three coaches actually had stints with Sri Lankan team at certain points of Sri Lanka's cricket history. These three coaches actually were with Sri lankan team when they were in trenches albeit they only tasted little success with the team. Out of above mentioned four "super coaches", only Whatmore endured such an unstable, inexperienced, in transition Sri Lankan side, that too in his second stint in 1999. As expected he failed to replicate the same success he had with the 96 team.

Ford's reality check

Graham Ford in his second stint, is quickly discovering what Dav Whatmore discovered in his second stint with Sri Lanka; There is no proper set of core players to carry the team and only having one top notch player in Angelo Mathews, the "wins" are not as immediate or frequent as they were in his first stint;

-www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1023539.html 

Ford has already acknowledged the need of a "solid foundation" (aka CORE of the team) on which the future would be built upon and as he also mentioned, it is going to take time.
Beginners at gym are advised first and foremost to build the "core body strength" before going on to muscle building. It is no different in a team. Build the core add the muscle later. Sri Lanka does have the ingredients to build a good "core of players" just like they had in 1996, 2005/7, 2011, 2014, but only the time and experience will do that for Sri Lanka and certainly not a "super coach" and his magic touch.

So does the "super-coach" really exist?

If someone ask you if there is such thing or someone as a "super coach", say, YES, there is. There are "super coaches" all over Sri Lanka. In their under 15 cricket teams; who act as the batting/bowling/fielding coaches, who act as the managers of the team, who act as the trainer and even sets the field for the captain... just like the "super coach" I had, when I was playing under 15 division two...



Outro:

Since "super coach" admirers have got their wish in bringing back Graham Ford as the coach of Sri lanka. Now they have turned their sniper scopes to another target: the Captain as they cannot cite "coach" as the reason for Sri Lanka's wretched performance since the departure of Sangakkara and Jayawardene.

Expect more about how Benaud's wise words of "..Captaincy is 90% luck and 10% skill..." can really explain the current hole Sri Lankan captain find himself in, in Part 2 of this piece.

Chris Gayle obliterated Brett Lee in WT20 2009

Chris Gayle Destroying Brett Lee from UppercuT on Vimeo.