Yardley To Make Sri Lanka Best Test Nation By Year 2000 (22 Jan 1997)

22 January 1997

Yardley to make SL best Test nation by 2000

By Sa`adi Thawfeeq

World Cup champion Sri Lanka`s new cricket coach Bruce Yardley believes that he could make the country the `Best Test Playing Nation` by the year 2000.

"If you can become champions in one-day cricket. I can`t see any reason why you cannot do it at Test level,`` said Yardley, addressing his inaugural press conference at the Cricket Board headquarters yesterday.

"You showed the world by winning the World Cup that you have this enormous amount of talent. So why can`t you be so competitive at Test level?`` asked Yardley who arrived on Monday with his wife and 3-yearold daughter to undertake a two-and-a-half-year contract as coach.

OPEN MIND

"I don`t think it will be too much. I`ve come here with an open mind. I will talk to the players and the selectors of what we got to do to become a more competitive Test nation. Maybe its a fact that these guys are not playing it session by session and looking in the overall plan for five days,`` he said .

"I am not going to change things here for the sake of changing because I am a new coach. I believe the coach`s role at international level is to check it all out and make sure the players are up there and operate as one big family,`` said Yardley.

"I love the way Sri Lanka play their cricket. You turned the oneday international cricket world upside down. Players like Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana have turned the whole concept of one-day cricket,`` he said.

UNPREDICTABLE

"I found the one-day game just a couple of years ago starting to become a little boring. It was becoming so predictable and the beauty of the game of cricket is its unpredictability. If you see the Pakistanis under Wasim Akram, they have taken Sri Lanka`s lead,`` said Yardley.

The former Australian Test cricketer is one of the few who does not believe in coaching certificates. He is a self-made coach who has coached hs club side to the premiership.

Yardley said that he undertook the job of coaching Sri Lanka `just for the love of the game`.

"My last Test was in Kandy in 1983. I love Sri Lanka. The people, the country and I consider myself lucky to be still involved in cricket,`` said Yardley, who has been contracted with the Sri Lanka Cricket Board till the end of the 1999 World Cup.

COACHING SKILLS

Yardley takes over from another former Australian Test cricketer Dav Whatmore under whose coaching skills, Sri Lanka won the World Cup.

Yardley believes that it is very important the coach should be part of the selection panel. The Cricket Board are seeking the Sports Minister`s approval to co-opt Yardley into the selection committee.

Yardley however will be covered by the Cricket Board constitution when talking to the press.

Cricket Board president Upali Dharmadasa said that prior permission will have to be got before the media can speak to him - an arrangement which did not work right with the former coach.

Dharmadasa however stated that a special general meeting was being called for in March to amend certain parts of the Cricekt Board`s constitution to overcome this problem.

Source :: Daily News (https://www.lanka.net)