Simon Willis is appointed as Sri Lanka’s high performance manager
May 24, 2016 at 6:42 PM
On Monday, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) appointed Simon Willis for the post of the high-performance manager on a two-year contract. Willis was Kent County Cricket Club’s high-performance director before taking up this new role.
A 42-years old Simon Willis was involved with Kent for 23 years long. Willis had represented Kent’s first XI during his cricketing career from 1993 to 1999 as a wicket-keeper. He had played 16 first-class matches and 14 List A matches for Kent. He became county’s high-performance director in 2009.
Willis said, “I am very grateful to Sri Lanka Cricket for offering me this exciting new opportunity. I see it as an exciting time to get involved with Sri Lanka Cricket and I am looking forward to seeing what we can achieve together.”
Thilanga Sumathipala, the chief of SLC, said that the Sri Lanka A team, the development squad, U-23 and U-19 squads would be working under him. Except the national coach, all SLC contracted coaches would be reporting to him.
Sri Lanka’s current head coach is Graham Ford. Willis worked under Ford when Kent won domestic T20 trophy (Twenty20 cup) in 2007 and finished as a runner-up in domestic List A (one-day) tournament (Friends Provident Trophy) 2008. Willis also played a leading role in launching the county’s cricket academy in 2003.