Hashan Tillakaratne named Sri Lanka women's head coach

Colombo [Sri Lanka], June 2 (ANI): Former Sri Lanka skipper Hashan Tillakaratne has been appointed as the country's women's cricket team head coach.
He took up the role officially on June 1 and he will be contracted upto December 2021. His first job will be to prepare the team for the 2022 ODI World Cup and Commonwealth Games qualifiers scheduled for early next year reported ESPNcricinfo.
The Sri Lanka women's team hasn't played any international cricket match since the T20 World Cup which was held last year.
"It's an honour and a privilege to work with the girls. They're very talented and skilful. I'm looking forward to the challenge," ESPNcricinfo quoted Tillakaratne as saying.
Tillakaratne was also the incharge of the Sri Lanka Under-19 side from 2018 to 2020.
"What they want is to justify the money being put into women's cricket by the ICC. Everyone knows about Chamari Athapaththu, but there are other talented girls also. They just need to be handled properly," said Tillakaratne.
"We need to analyse and identify what our strengths are. One key aspect I'm looking at is their fitness. Right now, the girls are doing their fitness workouts on their own, and they're sending us over their video clips. So they're quite keen and committed, that's a plus point," he added.
During his career, Tillakaratne played 83 Tests, scoring 4,545 runs at an average of 42.87, while his 200 ODIs brought him 3789 runs at an average of 29.60. (ANI)