Cricket: Geoff Marsh named Sri Lanka coach
Sri Lanka have been without a regular coach since Australian Trevor Bayliss stepped down after guiding the team to the World Cup final in April. Stuart Law was named interim coach for the England tour and then Rumesh Ratnayake for the recent home series against Australia. Law quit in July to coach Bangladesh.
“Marsh takes up his new assignment on September 27,” said Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) in a statement. “With his vast coaching and playing experience at the highest level, SLC is confident that he would be an ideal choice.”
Marsh, part of the 1987 World Cup-winning squad, coached Australia from 1995 to 1999 and then Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2004. He became the only cricketer to win the World Cup as player and coach when he guided Australia to victory in the 1999 edition.
The former Australian opener, 52, scored 2,854 runs in 50 Tests and 4,357 in 117 one-dayers before he quit international cricket in 1992.
“I’m going in with the same support team that they’ve had there. They’ve had things pretty well organised,” said Marsh. “What I bring is a lot of hard work, and working on the basic skills of the game, and good communication with the players and making sure they understand their roles. Basically I’ll be giving the player every opportunity I can to help him perform out in the middle.”
While he found his new job ‘quite exciting’, Marsh said he was encouraged by Sri Lanka’s young talent, despite losing the recent home series to Australia 1-0.
“I think Sri Lanka is in exactly the same position as Australian cricket is.”
He said Sri Lanka had recently lost experienced players such as Sanath Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas, while Lasith Malinga has quit Test cricket.
“In a country like Sri Lanka, that’s a pretty big loss,” he said, adding that seniors like former skippers Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene were world-class. “My goal for the next 12 months is to bring them on and improve on their performance against Australia.” said Marsh, who is currently the coach of Indian Premier League franchise Pune Warriors.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2011.
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Geoff Marsh may be a good and experienced coach. But he's son play to Australia national team and he was the Zimbabwe team coach too. So if he is a very good coach he had a good chance to show it through Zimbabwe team. But he didn't. Otherwise this is a big prank and he never support to SL team to improve their skills. My opinion is we should think about this at least one more time.
Geoff Marsh is very experience coach to SL. IPL Pune Warriors are the last in the list of IPL. Our Cricket Administration is naive about what is happening in cricket world. You need two good coaches such as Quick Swing Bowlerlike Shaun Pollock and batsmen like Mark War who can judge the ball how to leave on the off and over the stumps. My judgement is our SL batsmen like Mahela, Dilshan, Chandimal, Paranavithana, Tharanga and even Sanga cannot judge the ball. They are talented but they should have good coaching sessions to understand the technique. Our baller do not know how to ball at the stumps swinging from the offside to the off stumps like Ryan who took lots of wickets. Vaas should be employed to teach the laft arm bowlers how to swing and get these young ballers to ball well.