The 42-year-old, who had a modest first-class career as a medium-pacer, was last month appointed Sri Lanka Cricket's head of coaching by the Board's interim committee headed by Arjuna Ranatunga.

Having already served as coach at the SLC Academy, his elevation to his current post was almost a natural progression. Jayaratne has had a role to play in the emergence of Ajantha Mendis, and it is no surprise, therefore, to hear him speak of the impact unconventional bowlers can have in a sport that is increasingly being dominated by batsmen.

Jayaratne credits the coaching philosophy at various levels to the emergence of bowlers with actions out of the ordinary. "We do make subtle changes to the style of unorthodox bowlers, but there is no point in totally changing their style. When we see an action that is injury prone, we make a few changes depending on bio-mechanical body moments," Jayaratne said.

"We generally work around the natural style of the bowler. If you take the fast bowling industry, it has become quite mechanical but it has been proved by the Aussies that it can be quite successful. At the same time, it should be remembered that the likes of Lasith Malinga or Shaun Tait are different, but are good as anybody."

The man entrusted with the responsibility of furthering Sri Lanka's cricketing progress said coaches at the school level had been told not to tamper with the naturalness of young players. "If you try to make the game too technical, the results don't come," he observed. "Take someone like Sanath Jayasuriya. You can't ask him to stop playing the cut. He does get out playing the cut, but he also gets runs. If we ask him not to play the shot, he wouldn't get his runs. Maybe, we can advise him to wait for the right ball to hit. We can improve the risky shots but not eliminate them."

Apart from Australian Trevor Bayliss, the coach of the national team, Sri Lankan cricket is largely about home-bred coaches. "I learnt coaching in Australia, I have seen the Australian and English systems closely. But that doesn't mean we are aping them.

“We take all their knowledge and extract what is relevant to us. Some things you can implement and others you can't. What we have done is learn from them and create a tailor-made system that works for us. 

"To me, the structure and the environment are important. We need to look at the facilities they have. They are a developed country and we are a developing country, so facilities will never be the same.

“But we have the human resources and that is our advantage. We don't have to convince kids here to play cricket; there, they have to since they have other sporting options."