Top 5 cricket coaches

The concept of a coach for an international cricket team is one which is still relatively new, with the captain of a cricket team, along with the team manager, performing the duties of a present-day coach in earlier times. While coaches (or managers) have always had an extremely crucial role to play in sports like football and rugby, a cricket coach for an international team was never considered necessary until the late 1980s. There might have been occasions, during the 1970s and earlier, when coaches were present but only on a part-time basis. The whole thinking towards the role of coaches in international cricket changed during the last part of the 20th century.What, probably, brought about the change in thinking was the increasingly intense international schedule coupled with the media responsibilities of the captain, which led to the captain having too much on his plate. It, therefore, became prudent for teams to appoint head coaches in order to ease the workload of the captains.Cricket remains a sport where the onus is on the captain to make on-field decisions, and he is largely accountable for the performance of his team. But the introduction of coaches on a full-time basis has helped massively as, apart from being a good sounding board to the captain, they are able to discharge some of the off-field duties of the captain, thereby helping the captain to relax and concentrate on his own game.Here are the top 5 cricket coaches in the world:

#5 Dav Whatmore

Sri Lanka, who were granted Test status only in 1981, are a genuine force in world cricket today, and a fair share of credit for that goes to Dav Whatmore. Sri Lanka won the 1996 World Cup during Whatmore’s tenure, and ever since then, they have been one of the most consistent sides in international cricket. While it’s obviously the players who have to go out on the field of play and perform, what Whatmore did during that 1996 World Cup, was instill a lot of confidence among their younger players like Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas. He made them believe that they belonged at the international level.

He later took charge of Bangladesh, from 2003 to 2007, and helped the Tigers pull off a few famous upsets, notably against Australia in an ODI in Cardiff in 2005 and against India in the 2007 World Cup.

He also had the distinction of being coach of the Indian U19 side, led by Virat Kohli, which won the 2008 U19 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and he just recently was the coach of Pakistan, thereby having the experience of coaching in all the four major cricketing countries in the subcontinent.