Much has been said of the coach issue of the Bangladesh cricket team. After Nazmul Hasan Papon stated that Shakib’s mini-sabbatical during the South Africa series led to Papon’s departure, the current Sri Lanka boss has refuted those claims and revealed his reason.

“That's not true at all. Mr. Nazmul Hasan is a very clever, intelligent guy,” Hathurusingha said.

He then went on to imply that those words may have been to motivate Shakib al-Hasan, who was made the captain in Tests right after the Sri Lankan coach’s departure. He also described the BCB chief as “intelligent.”

“He must have used it for some other reason. Maybe that is done to fire up Shakib. I see that Shakib has been made the captain now. He must have used that for some reason, reading between the lines. He is very intelligent in handling things.”

While Nazmul Papon was of the opinion that Hathurusingha’s decision to quit was based on Bangladesh and its players alone. Hathurusingha has shed light to the other angle of the story. He claims that his dream was to always coach the Sri Lanka national team.

However, had he waited until the end of 2019 World Cup to leave Bangladesh and then join Sri Lanka, he would have coach the latter for another 4 years, forcing him to stay away from his family who live in Australia. As a result, he saw this as the perfect time to make the switch.

“Firstly, I felt that with Bangladesh, I have taken them to the best position I could. The other thing is that Sri Lanka Cricket had approached with the job for about four times.

“Then, I am coming to a stage where I can't stay away from my family for too long. My dream was to coach Sri Lanka... if I am spending about three years away from my family coaching Bangladesh and if I want to spend another four years or so coaching Sri Lanka or another country after that, I can't do that.

”This is the only time.”