In this episode of the Murali End, Gary Kirsten opens up about what drew him to accept the role of Sri Lanka’s head coach, his vision for Sri Lankan cricket, and what it will take to climb the ICC rankings. From T20 strategy to data analytics, squad depth to personal fitness, this is a wide-ranging conversation with one of the sharpest minds in the modern game.
Excerpts of the interview.
Question: So Gary, you come to this job with quite the resume — 14,000 international runs, 34 international centuries. You’ve led India to an ODI World Cup. You’ve taken South Africa to number one in all the rankings. You’ve coached all over the world. My first question is: what was appealing to you about taking this head coaching job in Sri Lanka?
Gary Kirsten: Well, first of all, it’s a real privilege to be coaching in the international space. That is always very attractive to me. It’s my fourth international team now. I just find that working with an international team, you have a little bit more time with the players, you get to know them and build relationships with them. You’re also in charge of a national cause, which I think is very special in cricket. Across three formats, the international game is still very relevant and very important.
I played a lot of cricket against Sri Lanka. There were a lot of household names that have now retired, but we always had fun contests. It’s a proud cricketing nation. To be offered this opportunity is a real privilege and I look forward to getting back into the international scene.
Question: As the head coach of an international team, there are many different things that you’re running — series to series, development of players. How do you envision the head coach’s role? What do you think is the most important set of things you hope to do?
Gary: I think the modern day coach is a lot of things to each player. The verticals of a national coach now — your man management skills are really important. You need to have a decent feel for the game across different formats so you can input into strategy. You need to manage upwards because you have a lot of stakeholders across the performance of the team. You need to work well with support staff, which is quite a big part of every team. You need a decent understanding of how to analyze and decode data to give your competitive advantage. Scouting and recruitment is really important. Session planning, putting your squad together across three formats so you can use players appropriately and manage them according to the demands of the game.
There’s a lot to do, and that’s what’s exciting. But modern day coaching has really gone to another level. Andy Flower always used to tell me: your experience and credibility as a player goes out the door in about five minutes when you become a professional coach, because it’s so varied and involved now.
Question: One other element I’m curious about — you’ve coached in the subcontinent. Are there any additional pressures or ways you deal with those pressures, whether it’s from the media, fans, or political involvement?
Gary: I think a healthy dose of experience helps a lot. Every country has its own nuances, challenges, and interferences. In the end, everyone wants the team to do well and everyone inputs differently. If you’re working in an environment where the team’s winning, everyone is on the same page and things go pretty smoothly. It’s when things aren’t going well that you need to manage the space really well. The lowest hanging fruit when a team isn’t doing well is the head coach — let’s get rid of the head coach.
We come into the job understanding that it’s fraught with potential obstacles and blockages. But if the team starts to win and do well, it’s generally quite a smooth road. So the intention is always to make sure the team is performing reasonably well from the outset, and then tracking towards greater success. These days it’s all about performing really well in ICC tournaments. That’ll be a priority, and making sure the team is progressing.
Question: You have a two-year contract. Do you have any particular goals you want to set out for that period?
Gary: A nice tangible one is ICC rankings across the three formats. At the moment Sri Lanka is ranked six in ODI and Tests, and eight in T20s. Everyone who is a stakeholder would want that to be better — certainly competing in the top four. That’s a nice tangible target to aim at.
The question is how. I’d love to understand the depth chart and in each position have three or four guys vying for that spot. Competition for places in any team across any sport is really, really important. I’d want to build out that squad as deep as we can to make sure there is competition for places, because then you don’t get complacency and guys comfortable with average performances. That’s really where the work’s going to be.
Question: It’s really the 30 or 40 around the team that drives that 11. If you look at this recent T20 World Cup, Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson weren’t playing in India’s T20 squad prior to that World Cup. I see the power of having a deep squad. Have you done any scouting on the Sri Lankan side? Do you have a sense of strengths and weaknesses so far?
Gary: I’ve been doing the homework and there’s certainly nothing I’d like to talk about publicly. But I would say, going across the three formats, there’s enough to narrate the story of where the blockages and issues are. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist — as a small example, batting strike rates in T20 and what you would need to do to match the level the rest of the world is at. We’ll look at all the different KPIs across the formats and make sure we are focused on driving towards best practice and higher standards across those KPIs, and build out the squad to be able to meet those various benchmarks.
Question: One of the struggles Sri Lanka cricket has had is not being honest about how to match the rest of the world, especially in T20 cricket where the game has evolved so quickly. What kind of player is going to be suitable to perform in the modern game in 2026? You’ve done coaching stints in the IPL — do you think there’s one way to crack the T20 nut, or do you believe in a variety of approaches?
Gary: My seven years in the IPL has taught me that the differences between teams is so narrow now that you are looking for your competitive advantage in a lot of different ways. The modern coach becomes really good at understanding: with the team selected and the skill sets available, where does your competitive advantage lie? I’ll give you an example. When I was with the Gujarat Titans in 2022 — our first year in the IPL — no one would have known that we actually won the IPL that year with the least amount of sixes hit out of every team. Everyone would have said there’s no way a team that hits the fewest sixes in the IPL could win it. But we were the team that hit the most fours. Our strategy — and this wasn’t entirely how we set out — was that our batting skill sets were actually more suited to boundary hitting along the ground than to six hitting. We didn’t have natural six hitters. Even someone like David Miller is actually more suited to hitting fours than sixes.
We also built a really strong bowling squad for Ahmedabad conditions where swing and bounce is a real factor at night, and Mohammed Shami was absolutely gun for us — getting two or three wickets in the powerplay on a regular basis. You can have these different strategies, but you need to understand what your skills are and then max out on them. It doesn’t necessarily mean every team needs to be batting at 15 runs an over in the powerplay, because that’s not always going to happen and you get to different conditions and need to play very differently.
Question: We see a winning formula and say how can we copy it, but if your players don’t have the same skill sets, you’re not going to be as successful. Can you build a winning strategy with the skills that you’ve got?
Gary: That’s exactly, ultimately, what you’re aiming at.
Question: Your discussion of Ahmedabad and how conditions played brings up something discussed a lot in Sri Lankan cricket. Of course pitches are lower and slower in Sri Lanka, so the tendency has been to dominate with spin. The corresponding weakness is that at the Premadasa with 85-metre boundaries it becomes very hard to develop a power game or boundary-hitting formula. How do you balance the natural benefits your home conditions lend you with playing internationally — say in India where it’s a completely different game?
Gary: That’s a great question and a challenge for every country. The transfer of skills into other conditions is not easy. Typically teams struggle to come to Sri Lanka and play in those conditions. It would be the same for a Sri Lankan or Indian team going to South Africa, because the conditions aren’t easy there. The transfer of skills is really important — or it’s looking at your squad and saying who are the players best suited for these conditions, and are they experienced enough that we’re ready to pick them?
What do South Africans do when they go and play Test match cricket in India? They know they need three or four quality spinners. South Africa have now got to a point where they have that. It would be the same for the Sri Lankan team — do they have batters that can handle pace and bounce in South Africa, on wickets that are doing a bit? That takes time, but it would certainly be one of our measurables as a team, that we can go and perform in other conditions.
How do you perform in other conditions? It doesn’t just happen. It might require getting to a country really early and playing three or four games to prepare yourself. It might require looking at players with a different set of skills to those very successful in Sri Lanka. But I think the most important thing is to draw on the depth of resource that Sri Lankan cricket has and make sure that squad is built out and ready to go.
Question: One big thing coming up in your time in Sri Lanka is a home ODI World Cup — preparing to play ODI cricket when there’s so much T20 cricket being played, and preparing to play in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe — all slightly different conditions. Can you tell me where you feel the ODI game is at the moment?
Gary: One absolute measurable is that in my era a par score in ODIs was around 250. Now it’s 300. The game has ramped up. You certainly need to bat at a better rate and T20 cricket has allowed us to consider that. You also only have four fielders outside the ring for pretty much 40 overs, which is a big factor.
Strategically, teams can look at this and say: what are our ODI format KPIs? If we’re ranked 10th in the world at taking wickets in the powerplay, that becomes an important KPI — who are the bowlers we’re going to use in that period? If we’re ranked eighth in the world in scoring hundreds in ODI cricket, we want to become ranked one or two. We’re still priding ourselves in ODI cricket that scoring 100 is very relevant and really important, even though the modern game asks you to play a more high-risk and aggressive style. Those are the kinds of things we’ll unpack, look at in our strategies, and work out — with our skills, how are we looking to play ODI cricket to have success not only in Sri Lanka but around the world.
Question: You’ve brought up KPIs a couple of times. It seems like data and analysis are important to you. There’s a wealth of data available — so many numbers and statistics one can bring to bear. What’s your thought on how to use those numbers responsibly? Not just “here are 50 numbers to consider,” but these are the three or four we really want to think about going into this match.
Gary: Great question, and that’s the challenge for us as coaches. Analysts can sometimes act really irresponsibly — they’ll throw out information and say if we don’t go down this road, we’ve got no chance of winning. Our role as head coaches is to look at the various important KPIs that we think are going to help us — with the skill sets we’ve got over a period of time — give ourselves the best chance of success in every game. That’s where the use of data becomes really, really important.
In the end, what do we want to do as coaches? We want to simplify the process as much as we can for the players. Our role is to decode the information, and then any compelling information worth building a strategy on, we bring into the team environment and use accordingly. That can vary from venue to venue, from country to country, and within our own skill sets — and then allowing an individual to play to how he sees fit. Remember, cricket is largely an individual game. You want to present each guy with enough information to help him build his own game plans in a match situation.
Question: Bringing up the point about it being an individual game — one buzzword we hear is “power hitting.” It’s very easy as an outsider to say how many sixes did they hit, what’s their balls per boundary. As a coach, what’s your view on boundary hitting? If you could hit a six every ball, you would — but that’s not how cricket is played. It’s an event sport. How do you approach talking with players about developing power hitting skills?
Gary: Power hitting in T20 cricket is very much part of the game. As coaches, we take comfort knowing we’ve got a couple of batters at five, six, seven, eight who could change the course of a game in six balls by hitting the ball out of the ground. That’s almost a given.
But the point you’re making is that to blanket power hitting as a must-have, I think varies from venue to venue. Sometimes an individual who’s not a great power hitter but can run really well between the wickets is a really useful player up to the 15th, 16th, 17th over, because the wicket might tell you that’s what’s needed. I think of Suryakumar Yadav’s innings at the Premadasa where India were really struggling and he realized he wasn’t going to easily power hit there — he knocked the ball around the ground and got them to a competitive total.
Having one or two individuals who can affect the course of a game at the back end of an innings in T20 cricket is a very nice to have. But you’ve got to look at the resources available in the country — are there individuals we’re preparing for that role? Are there any naturally good at it who we can improve? And if we go to different surfaces where that becomes an absolute priority, do we have the individuals who can do that? It’s definitely got to be part of the equation for every squad.
Question: One question that’s been going around — fitness and fielding. As a head coach, where does fitness and fielding fit in the hierarchy of skills you want players to develop?
Gary: I’ll tell you a little bit about my own fitness. I was a fitness freak when I played professionally for 17 years. Since finishing playing, I’m now 58 years old and I’ve actually gotten better. I’m a full-on endurance athlete — a mountain biker who rides mountain biking marathons. Fitness to me is an absolute priority.
But importantly, how does fitness fit into each individual’s skill sets and the role they play in the team? Blanket and generic fitness is crucial, but I want to make sure it’s aligned to everything an individual needs to do. If your running between the wickets is not good enough, that is a physicality we need to improve — and I’ll be asking our fitness trainer to make sure there’s a marked improvement over those six or seven weeks. The modern game asks a lot of you physically. If you don’t have a basic level of fitness and you’re falling down with injuries and your skill sets are compromised because you don’t have the physical capabilities on the field, that’s a problem. It’s going to affect the performance of the team. So I’ll be quite firm in that space.
Question: Do you do marathons, mountain biking? What’s your endurance sport of choice?
Gary: Mountain biking — I do multi-stage races, five to six hours of riding a day. It’s a very popular sport in South Africa. I’m also looking forward to exploring the Sri Lankan countryside and finding trail to ride on. I’ve already looked on the internet and there are some nice riding events in Sri Lanka. I’ll have to get away from the heat because I’ll struggle with the humidity, but there are some mountainous areas that are cooler and you can find some nice hills to climb.
Question: Any experiences in your international career that stand out from your time touring in Sri Lanka or playing against Sri Lankan players?
Gary: I love touring Sri Lanka. As a player I played a lot of cricket there — some success, some not. I do remember at the SSC getting run out on the last ball of the day by Jo Callis. Not great — after I’d been slogging for a couple of hours, got myself to 50, couldn’t wait to bat the next day, and then got run out on the last ball. That made me pretty grumpy.
Playing cricket in Sri Lanka was a great experience. We knew it was unique. Whether Sri Lanka came to South Africa or we went there, it was always a tough assignment. As a coach with the Indian team, I spent a lot of time in Sri Lanka — I’ll never forget a five to six week stint in Dambulla for a tri-series there. We stayed in a wonderful hotel on a nature reserve area. I really enjoyed that because I love nature and open space.
I’ve done a bit of touring around — been on the east side of the island, also been down south. My wife loves going to Bentota. That’s her favourite area. We’ll definitely do a couple of trips down there. I love Sri Lanka — it’s a great place to be.
Question: Any favourite Sri Lankan players of the past? Players you relished watching or facing?
Gary: I played a lot against many of those legendary players. I was always blown away by Jayasuriya — he took the game forward even in ODI cricket and did some crazy stuff. Muralitharan — I played a lot of cricket against him and we had a lot of contests. He was a world-class bowler. I used to face Chaminda Vaas a huge amount as an opening batsman — we had our contests and I really enjoyed that.
And then obviously watching some of the greats of late — Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Lasith Malinga — some incredible players. Even in today’s team as well. The one thing that always stands out with me about Sri Lankan cricket is the continuous procession of young players coming through. They got into the U19 World Cup final and there are a lot of good players coming through, very similar to South Africa in many ways. I’m excited to have a look into that space and see what’s available.
Credit: Murali End
