Chandika Hathurusingha has been adjudged as Sri Lanka’s new head coach, Sri Lanka Cricket confirmed on Friday (December 8). SLC said that Chandika will take over the role from December 20.

Hathurusingha’s first assignment with the team will be the upcoming tour of Bangladesh in January. Accidentally, he quit as Bangladesh head coach in October this year.

Highly regarded as one of the biggest readers of cricket, Hathurusingha rose to fame when he guided an unfancied Moors SC to Sri Lanka’s first-class title as a player cum coach in 2003. He retired from first-class cricket the day Moors won the Premier League and became the coach of UAE.

In 2007, Chandika returned Sri Lanka to take over as “A’ team coach. Following their second string team’s highly successful tour of South Africa in 2009, then Test skipper Kumar Sangakkara requested the board to release him for the senior squad.

Although he was expected to take over as head coach of the national squad from Trevor Bayliss after the 2011 World Cup, he was sacked after differences with then SLC President DS de Silva.

There were certain chances that Hathurusingha will not be able to coach Sri Lanka in Bangladesh as he was contractually bound to give three months notice before taking up another assignment. Hathurusingha is expected to sacrifice one month’s salary from BCB and SLC is expected to be compensating him.

Their poor run in ODIs for the Islanders this year put automatic qualification for the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2019 in danger. Ultimately, they narrowly qualified ahead of Windies.

Several players of Sri Lanka’s current squad like Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, and Suranga Lakmal have graduated to the senior squad having played under Hathurusingha when he was ‘A’ team coach.