Silverwood’s methods have worked for Sri Lanka

By Rex Clementine

There were few murmurs when Chris Silverwood was hired as Sri Lanka’s Head Coach. The reason being that two months before SLC got him on board, the Yorkshireman had been sacked as Head Coach of England.

There are two types of coaches. Career coaches like John Buchanan, Dav Whatmore and Trevor Bayliss. Then there’s the other category, former players who get prominent coaching positions because of their standing in the game. Examples are Brendon McCullum, Mahela Jayawardene and Ravi Shastri. Silverwood falls to the former category. He was Essex’s coach when the County Championship retuned to Chelmsford after quarter of a century. Soon, ECB got interested and roped him in as Fast Bowling Coach.

There was World Cup success in 2019 and when Bayliss quit as Head Coach on a high, Silverwood was elevated to England’s top job. He did have a decent run. But once you lose the Ashes 4-0, there’s no way you are going to survive. He was sacked in February. He was quite powerful in England where the Head Coach is a selector as well. His policy of rest and rotate didn’t win him many admirers. The reason being that if you are to beat the Aussies, you have got to be at full strength. British press can be ruthless but in the case of Silverwood even the tabloids agreed on one thing; Silverwood is a decent, charming man.

You wondered how a decent man can succeed in the Sri Lankan system. Our most successful coaches have been Aussies with an aggressive approach like Whatmore and Tom Moody. Bayliss was quite successful as well but when you have Muralitharans, Jayasuriyas, Sangakkaras and Jayawardenes the coach has plenty of match winning options. Silverwood’s case was different. He inherited a young team. A team that was unsure of how to go about things. A team whose batting unit collapsed too often and a bowling unit that was frequently injured. There were off the field distractions as well.

Silverwood has been low key letting his players take the limelight. He’s not the type of person to express his emotions in public. He’s known as someone who is methodical and meticulous. Spends a lot of time in planning and remains a father figure to the players. But when he needs to be firm, he lets the players have it. Apparently during the tour of Bangladesh, when the fast bowlers were wayward with the new ball, he gave a piece of his mind to the quicks. Not sure how many of them understood the message though.On another occasion during the bilateral series against Australia, when a member of the support staff got too excited and was disrespecting the captain as emotions ran high, he put his foot down again saying there was no necessity to do that.

It’s been an impressive six months for Silverwood. When Mickey Arthur vacated his position in December, those who were entrusted to headhunt a coach weren’t looking beyond Graham Ford and Paul Farbrace. Ford is an excellent choice but there are other coaches who are capable of contributing as well. Silverwood has proved it. He has won Tests against Australia and Pakistan, won an ODI series against Australia and the biggest of them all was the Asia Cup win.

To win five games in a row in T-20 format, that too beating world’s number one and number two ranked teams, is no mean task. Australia was Silverwood’s lowest point in coaching. That was last year. He has a few things to prove to the Aussies and watching young Sri Lankans competing in the World Cup will be exciting.