Cricket Association of Nepal on Thursday announced the appointment of Dav Whatmore as the head coach of the team.
The association, in a statement, also said that it has appointed Raunaq Bahadur Malla as General Manager, Ramesh Kumar Neupane as Chief Finance Officer, and Binod Kumar Das as Cricket Manager, with effect from January 1, 2021.
“Dav Whatmore of Australia has been appointed as the Head Coach of the Nepal National Cricket Team,” the statement read.
Nepal is an emerging and quickly progressing cricket nation. Leg-spinner, Sandeep Lamichhane is Nepal’s most sought after cricketer in franchise cricket. He also has a contract with the Delhi Capitals in the IPL.
Whatmore’s manager Kaustav Lahiri said the former is “extremely keen” to take this new challenge.”Dav is extremely keen to take this new challenge as he strongly believes Nepal has some great talent and has a very bright future in cricket. Nepal is a beautiful country and Dav is looking forward to having this new challenge with a bunch of young talent of Nepal,” Lahiri said in a statement.
Whatmore coached the Sri Lankan team which won the 1996 World Cup defeating Australia in the final in Lahore. The 66-year-old has also coached Bangladesh, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Nepal failed to qualify for the 2021 T20 World Cup in India . Hence, Whatmore’s major challenge would be to help the Asian nation book a place in the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
Apart from heading Sri Lanka to a World Cup title, Dav Whatmore was the coach of the Bangladesh team in the 2007 World Cup where they qualified for the Super Eight knocking out India in the group stage.