Though shortlived, Gurusinha leaves footprints on Nigerian cricket

Asanka Gurusinha brought some innovations to national team training

The past years have been racy for the Nigeria Cricket Federation (NCF), with landmark activities that are currently reshaping how the sport is being perceived, its growth and eventually, its future.

One of such key points is the hiring of Asanka Gurusinha, as the national coach and high-performance manager for the country.

His appointment in December 2020, during the pandemic, came in the midst of some other high moments and so, not much attention was paid to its importance except that it was another uptick in the middle of a high-season.

As a World Cup winner (1986) and former national coach of Sri Lanka, his home country, and numerous coaching experiences under his belt in Australia, the attraction to Nigeria for someone of his pedigree apart from the country’s growing influence, was the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) connection with the job.

Although Gurusinha had confessed that he knew Nigeria played some measure of cricket before he applied for the job, he said the extent he still could not tell until he came in contact with the vacancy he applied for.

“I know Nigeria plays some cricket. At least I used to monitor the performance of the associate countries and have seen some mention of them in the reports from the ICC, but that’s the much I know. The other thing is perhaps that they are a developing country and similar to Sri Lanka in a lot of ways,” he had said during an interview after his resignation recently.

Nigeria had just broken century old record (of its own), qualifying for its first ICC World Cup (albeit, Under 19) since 1906 when the game was first documented in the country. The qualification (in 2019) brought some global attention and