Kathmandu – Cricket Association of Nepal(CAN) on Thursday appointed former Australian cricketer Dav Whatmore as the Head Coach of the Nepali National cricket team.
Prior to the announcement, CAN had a round of interviews among 12 shortlisted candidates from 72 applicants. While Whatmore was the favorite for the job, he was joined by the likes of former head coach Pubudu Dassanayake and Apurwa Desai in the race to the job.
The 66-year-old will commence his new role, effective from the 1st of January, 2021.
Whatmore is a Sri Lankan born former Australian cricketer and Coach. He has played seven Test matches for Australia in 1979 and one One Day International in 1980. Since the 1990s, he has served as the coach for almost all South Asian nations. Nepal would be his fourth country in this region.
He was the Head coach of Sri Lanka when Sri Lanka won the Cricket World Cup in 1996 and helped Bangladesh build into a strong cricketing nation during the 2003-07 period.
Furthermore, he has also served as coach of the Kerala Ranji Trophy team and served as director of the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru between 2007 and 2009. He has coached Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League as well.
“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 in Nepal,” said a Cricket Association of Nepal statement.
In 2017, Dav was invited to Nepal to launch a charitable organization called Bat and Ball foundation which supported U19 cricketers for a 15-day high-performance camp.
