Dav Whatmore, former Australia cricketer and former coach of Sri Lanka's 1996 World Cup-winning team has been appointed the head coach of the Nepal Cricket team on Thursday (December 17).
He has replaced Umesh Patwal as Nepal head coach – who stepped down from the post in February this year.
Apart from Whatmore, Cricket Nepal also announced the appointments of Raunak Bahadur Malla as general manager and Binod Kumar Das as cricket manager from the start of next year.
Cricket Association of Nepal said in a press release: “Dav Whatmore of Australia has been appointed as the Head Coach of the Nepal National Cricket Team.”
The further statement reads: “Dav is extremely keen to take on this new challenge, as he strongly believes Nepal has great talent and a very bright future in international cricket. Nepal is a beautiful country and Dav is looking forward to have this new challenge with a bunch a young talent of Nepal.”
Meanwhile, the experienced coach has already coached national teams like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe in the past, as well as, had served in a coaching capacity in almost all South Asian nations and now Nepal would be his fourth Asian country.
The 66-year-old also coached Sri Lanka to the World Cup triumph over Australia in 1996, as well as, Pakistan to the Asia Cup title in 2012. He has also coached Zimbabwe and Bangladesh as well.
Since Nepal did not qualify for next year’s Twenty20 World Cup in India, Whatmore’s first major task would be to help the Asian team book a place in the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia and his Manager Kaustav Lahiri said the Aussie is “extremely keen” to take this new challenge.
Lahiri said in a statement: “Dav is extremely keen to take this new challenge as he strongly believes Nepal has some great talent and has a very bright future in cricket. Nepal is a beautiful country and Dav is looking forward to having this new challenge with a bunch of young talent of Nepal.”
Noteworthy, Whatmore represented Australia in seven Tests and one ODI between 1979 and 1980 while scored over 6,000 runs for Victoria in first-class cricket.
Apart from guiding the India U19 team to the 2008 U19 Cricket World Cup title in Malaysia, he also served as the Director of the National Cricket Academy in India in 2007.
(With ANI/Reuters Inputs)
