Sajith Fernando, Former Sri Lanka First Class player, coach and selector, has been named in the USA youth cricket selection committee for the next three years, Cricket Age exclusively learns.
Sajith, who has migrated to USA now, has been regarded as one of the all time legend in Sri Lanka domestic cricket history, could not play for his country largely due to the internal politics even after scoring more than 10,000 runs and taking more than 250 wickets in First Class cricket.
USA cricket announced the new selection committee on Saturday (October 10). With this historical achievement, Sajith has probably become the first ever Sri Lanka cricketer, who has been appointed national selector in a other country.
“USA Cricket is pleased to announce today the creation of a new Men’s Youth Selection Panel, as well as the creation of six new Zonal Selection Panels. These new selection panels will come into place as of October 2020, with all selectors beginning their roles with immediate effect” USA cricket announced.
“The Men’s Youth Selection Panel will primarily be responsible for selecting all USA Men’s Youth teams. It is a five person panel, which will be chaired for the first two years by the USA Men’s Selector, Amer Afzaluddin. He will be joined by four new appointments, all of who have experience of playing international cricket, to serve on the panel for a period of three years.”
“Announcing our panels of Men’s Youth Selectors and Men’s Zonal Selectors is a significant stride forward on the path to developing a more comprehensive National Performance structure. We are incredibly lucky to have been able to appoint selectors to both sets of panels with real cricketing calibre right across the board. USA Cricket would like to congratulate all of those appointed and thank everyone for their commitment to advancing cricket across the United States in the coming years” USA Cricket Operations Director, Richard Done said.
A domestic legend, Sajith served as Sri Lanka national selector and manager as well. However, as the factors like – internal politics, jealousy and conspiring against each other – have always been a part of Sri Lanka cricket, a straight forward and genuine Sajith Fernando could not survived in the toxic environment and eventually decided to leave the country!
Men’s Youth Selection Panel:
- Chair – Amer Afzaludin, (Detroit, 2-year term, current USA Men’s Selector)
- Sajith Fernando (Los Angeles, 3-year term, former Sri Lanka player)
- Alvin Kallicharran (Raleigh, 3-year term, former West Indies player)
- Jannisar Khan (Houston, 3-year term, former USA player)
- Steve Massiah (New York, 3-year term, former captain USA team)
