BSP-30 Vaas aims to bolster Sri Lankan cricket’s pipeline

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BSP-30

CRICKET-CHAMINDA-VAAS

Vaas aims to bolster Sri Lankan cricket’s pipeline

DHAKA, August 17, 2019 (BSS) – Former Sri Lanka fast bowler Chaminda Vaas who has recently taken the charge of his country’s Emerging team as its head coach is looking to bolster the pipeline, helping the players ready for the national team.

Sri Lanka’s Emerging team will play three-match one-day and two-match unofficial Test series against Bangladesh’s High Performance (HP) team and Vass is looking forward to make a mark here also.

After retiring from Test cricket in 2009 and from ODIs and T20 in 2011, the left arm fast bowler was appointed as head coach of Sri Lankan Emerging team on May 14, 2019.

And after his appointment, the Lankan emerging players performed really well during their South Africa tour when they became champions at the Triangular one-day series against South Africa Emerging team and University Sports of South Africa on July, this year.

Vaas said the series against Bangladesh’s Emerging players will be exciting.

“It is a new role, yes of course. It’s a great honour to work as head coach of these young, exciting cricketers from Sri Lanka. These guys played very well in South Africa. They are so energetic and very skillful guys. Even the young Bangladesh guys are really good as well. It’s going to be an exciting tournament. I look forward to the tournament,” Vaas said here on Saturday.

“I’m really enjoying. Like I said you know these guys are very exciting and very energetic and they are doing really well. I look forward to see them performing in the middle. They had a good tournament in South Africa. So I really, really like to see their performance and I’m really pleased with their performance,” he added.

Since his debut in 1994, the 45-year-old former Lankan pacer took 761 wickets till his retirement. The former Sri Lankan ODI skipper also has 3089 runs and 2025 runs in ODI.

After serving his national team for almost 20 years and being a local coach, Vaas thinks, it is a good way to return something to his national cricket by sharing his playing experience with his own regional youngsters as he sounded happy and hopeful with depth that the Sri Lankan players are have in their batting and bowling.

“Well, I played for 20 years for my country and did really well for my country. So it’s good to pass my knowledge and experience with these youngsters and it’s good to give them back. Being a local I’m sure these boys are learning a lot from local coaches,” Vaas remarked.

“It’s a good thing to work with local coaches. It’s important to put them in the right track across the team. My main strength is discipline. I played for 20 years for my country from discipline. Same message I’ve taken across to these youngsters as well. They absorb it and they are doing very well,” he added.

“The strength is we have batting and bowling and very skillful guys. Batting and bowling both are well balanced and I’m sure that these guys will take from … and perform really well for Sri Lanka cricket.”

BSS/SMP/SMM/2010 hrs