Sri Lankan cricket legend Mahela Jayawardena has made a name himself in coaching in a very short time and presently, he is in high demand across the cricket leagues around the world.
After retiring from international cricket in 2015, Jayawardena joined England as a batting consultant in the same year until the 2016 T20 World Cup in India and then joined Mumbai Indians (MI) as their head coach and guided the franchise to three Indian Premier League (IPL) titles in 2017, 2019 and 2020.
The former Sri Lankan skipper also worked as the head coach of Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) franchise Khulna Titans on a two-year contract signed in 2017. He recently coached the Southern Brave to the title in the inaugural The Hundred tournament in England.
Well, Jayawardena’s coaching credentials have rocketed to the top now, but the MI head coach is not interested in taking up a full-time coaching role at the moment as he wants to spend quality time with the family and enjoy the job at the hands at the same time.
As reported by Sky Sports, Jayawardena stated: “Having done 18 years of international cricket as a player I don’t want to live out of a suitcase for 12 months of the year. This is a good challenge for me and it’s early days. I don’t do too many tournaments so that I have my personal time to spend back home with the family. I’m happy to help out as a consultant here and there (with Sri Lanka) but not on a full-time basis because I would not enjoy that personally.”
He was impressed with the format in the 100-ball tournament in England and wants some of the rules should be added to T20 cricket in the future.
Jayawardena said, “I think you shouldn’t tinker too much, the product itself is pretty good. Personally, I love the new tactical onuses on two overs for a bowler, the new batsman has to come in and face, I think that kind of thing might even creep up to T20 cricket, even into World Cups.”
He signed off by saying, “It’s tactically good for the game, you’re not going away from the rules as such but when a bowler gets a wicket and rather than having the non-striker getting across, you have a new batsman to bowl at.”
