Wisden’s Editor Lawrence Booth has criticized England and Wales Cricket Board for encouraging Paul Farbrace to defect to England ranks after just five months into his two year contract with Sri Lanka Cricket. Farbrace coached Sri Lanka to the World T-20 triumph three weeks ago and soon after the tournament, joined the ECB as Assistant Coach to Peter Moores, leaving SLC in a dilemma.
Booth was the guest in Cricinfo’s Polite Enquiries programme hosted by George Dobell. Fans can tweet their questions to be answered by the guest and former New Zealand skipper Martin Crowe had tweeted a question on Farbrace leaving the Sri Lankan job and joining England.
“I am quite uncomfortable as well at what happened,” Booth said. “I don’t know how politely the ECB enquired from SLC. I suspect they didn’t ask him (Farbrace) to wait till the Sri Lanka series was over. They want to get the new set up straight away,” Booth said.
“But had the BCCI done this to the ECB, we all will be up in arms saying that its money and power talking,” he added.
“It’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it? People will look at this and say that it’s an example of the Big Three throwing their weight around,” he further said.
Booth, a regular visitor to Sri Lanka to cover cricket went onto say, “The one area that I have sympathy with Farbrace is that Sri Lanka Cricket aren’t the most reliable employers and Sangakkara and Jayawardene will tell you that.”
