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| Friday, 4 February 2005 |
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Dyson to continue as coach by Sa'adi Thawfeeq John Dyson will be back on March 1 to continue in his capacity as coach of the national cricket team before they embark for the Test tour to New Zealand in April. Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Pesident Mohan de Silva said that Dyson had agreed to return to Sri Lanka and complete his contract with SLC which ends on March 31 and prepare the team for the two Tests against New Zealand. The Australian-born coach angered a section of the SLC top brass when he went home to Sydney straight after the cancellation of the New Zealand tour without informing them. Sri Lanka's tour to New Zealand was aborted after just one one-day international following the Boxing Day tsunami disaster. The SLC's ExCo was divided on whether they should retain Dyson and give him a fresh contract or look for someone else to replace him. However over a period of time the issue seems to have thinned out following talks Dyson had with De Silva and SLC CEO Duleep Mendis in Australia recently. De Silva said that SLC have offered Dyson new terms in his contract which the coach hopes to discuss with SLC officials when he is here. Depending on the outcome of the discussions Dyson's contract could be extended from anything to between one year and the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean. The former Australian opening batsman succeeded another former Australian Test player Dav Whatmore by undertaking a 19-month contract with SLC as coach of the Sri Lanka team from September 1, 2003. Within that period of time Dyson improved Sri Lanka's ICC rankings in both forms of the game. Sri Lanka lifted themselves from seventh to fifth position in Tests and from seventh to second place in the one-dayers. Sri Lanka are due to play New Zealand in two Tests at Napier starting on April 4 and at Wellington commencing April 11 apart from a 3-day warm up game from March 26-30. These matches constitute part of the postponed tour to New Zealand in December last year. The national cricket selectors named a pool of 24 players last week for training from which the final squad will be selected for the tour. These players will be involved in SLC's provincial tournament which gets underway tomorrow and ends with the final at Dambulla on March 6. |
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