Coach appointment only after England tour - de Silva

Sri Lanka will name a successor to head coach Trevor Bayliss after Sri Lanka's tour of England that starts in May. Bayliss had said that he would step down after the World Cup and Stuart Law, who assisted Bayliss since November 2009, has been appointed interim coach for the England tour. Sri Lanka Cricket will be monitoring Law's performance on that tour as he is among the shortlisted candidates for the position of head coach.

"We've given him a chance to handle the team on the England tour," Sri Lanka Cricket interim committee DS de Silva said, "and see whether he is going to fit into the scene."

The other three coaches in the running for the job are former Sri Lanka coach Tom Moody, his former assistant coach Trevor Penney and former England and Glamorgan batsman Matthew Maynard. "We knew about two months ago that Bayliss was leaving so we advertised in the web and papers, both internationally and locally. Nine responded from which we shortlisted five persons," de Silva said. "Everybody showed interest [and] we have already interviewed two of them on the phone.

"One among the nine was John Buchanan [former Australian coach]. We wrote to Buchanan and he gave his terms but we cannot afford them. We have dropped him from the list. Moody is due to come back to us. When he was here we had a long chat with him and he showed some interest in the job.

"We are going to ask the other two - Penney and Maynard - to come and give a presentation. It will take another week or so. We couldn't wait for that long so we decided to appoint Law for the England tour. Until the tour is over we won't appoint a head coach," he said.

de Silva said that former Sri Lankan captain Marvan Atapattu had been approached to become the batting coach of the national team. "We had a two-hour meeting with Marvan today and he gave us a very good presentation. We have to talk about terms with him and we have to take a decision on Monday whether to appoint him for the English tour."

de Silva said that he was disappointed that Sri Lanka couldn't win the World Cup but said that the team "did well" to reach the final. "I have to give credit to all the coaching staff and management of the national team they have done a good job," he said.

de Silva also said there was no crisis within the Sri Lanka team or at Sri Lanka Cricket in wake of the number of resignations after the World Cup. Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene resigned as captain and vice captain respectively with the national selectors handing in their resignations as well. "I really don't know why it all happened at once," he said. "I cannot give an answer to that. I was surprised by Sangakkara resigning from the captaincy and the selectors taking a decision like this."