Suspension of all international cricket because of COVID-19 pandemic has given Mickey Arthur an opportunity to "reflect" upon his three-month-long tenure as head coach of Sri Lanka. The 51-year-old South African is also looking at this as a chance to "recalibrate" plans and pre-set goals for the national side. 

Read Also: Paddy Upton explains why break might lead to anxiety, insecurity amid sportspersons

"We are using this time to reflect on the first 3 months of our (the new coaching set-up's) tenure and recalibrate our individual and team plans going forward to the very important series that we have coming up later in the year," Arthur told Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) in an interview. 

"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."

Players have been told to keep themselves physically and mentally ready for whenever the on-field play resumes. "All have individual fitness plans to keep them up to speed with their levels of fitness, these plans are tailored to the facilities that each player has at his disposal at home to maintain the expected fitness levels," Arthur said. 

"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."

Arthur then weighed in over the Lankans' issues in T20Is following recent whitewash received at the hands of visiting West Indies line-up at Pallekele. "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," he said. 

"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."

At the Test level, Arthur would've loved to see how his team goes against a strong opposition like England in a series that was unfortunately suspended. 

"It was really disappointing not playing the test series against England although this will be played at a later date," he said. "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."

(Inputs from SLC)