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Thursday March 28, 2024

Arthur using break to reassess plans for Lanka

By Icc-cricket.com
April 06, 2020

COLOMBO: Mickey Arthur, the Sri Lanka coach, is using the current break from cricket to reflect on his three-month tenure and re-calibrate the plans for the team.

According to Arthur, the time off — forced by the COVID-19 outbreak — has also given the coaching staff an opportunity to reassess their own goals, study oppositions and stay ahead in terms of coaching trends.

“We are using this time to reflect on the first three months of our tenure and recalibrate our individual and team plans going forward to the very important series that we have coming up later in the year.

“We have been very happy with the improvement and willingness from the players to buy into the structure, work ethic, levels of preparation and goals that we have set the team in all formats,” Arthur said in a chat with SLC media.

“This isolation period is giving us as coaching staff a time to reflect as well on the player plans, roles and goals that we have set for ourselves as a group. We are also looking at trends from around the world and analyzing all the opposition that we are going to play against over the next year. We as a group want to stay ahead of the pack and be the leaders not the followers in terms of coaching trends around the world.”

Arthur also spoke about individual fitness regimes that the players have been asked to follow in order, tailored as per facilities available to each player at home, to maintain fitness levels and be mentally prepared for resumption of cricketing action.

“Our trainers Dishan Foneska and Paul Khoury have been very proactive in working out the programs with each individual. I have been sending out exercises to each player as well based on the player reflecting and then sharing with me strengths and weaknesses of their games. These reflections are mental, physical and technical. This allows us as coaches to then add this to the player plans that we have constructed for each player.”

Sri Lanka’s two-Test series at home against England was among many series to be called off due to the Coronavirus pandemic. According to a disappointed Arthur, the disruption came at a time when Sri Lanka were growing as a Test team and had identified “a brand” to be successful.

“It was really disappointing not playing the Test series against England although this will be played at a later date. I felt that our Test team grew so much on our tour of Zimbabwe...this tour was very tough and we had to play very disciplined cricket to win the series because of the conditions that we were presented with over there.

“We had just worked out a brand that we knew would be successful against all teams and I just hope that the momentum that we had built up will not be lost with our test team when we start up again...we have some very realistic goals with our test team and believe that we have now the players and game plans to have success both at home and abroad in the future,” said Arthur.

Speaking about the other formats of cricket, Arthur was happy with the way Sri Lanka won the three-match ODI series against West Indies while mentioning that the T20I series loss to the same team amplified the need for fine tuning and identifying methods to play to the team’s strengths in the shortest format.

“I was really happy with the outcome of the three match ODI series against West Indies. The players got just reward for all the hard work that they had put into their preparation. The impressive thing for me was to see the players take on the brand that we want to play and then the execution of their individual roles was very good, it just proves what can be achieved with planning, role clarity and belief.

“Our T20 side is still going to take some fine tuning and this was amplified against a very strong West Indies team that simply had too much power for us. I have been here before with the Pakistan T20 team and know what is needed, I think the most important thing is building a method to win games based on the resources that you have at your disposal and then making sure that the players are under no illusion as to what that method is based on our strengths,” added Arthur.