JOHNSONVILLE CRICKET CLUB BREAKS NEW GROUND

The Club is thrilled to announce the appointment of Malinda Warnapura as its first ever full time Director of Coaching and Development. Malinda has been engaged on a three year contract to take scontrol of the coaching and development at our Club.

Malinda is a Sri Lankan national who played 14 tests and 3 ODI’s for Sri Lanka. A highest test score of 120 and an average in test match cricket a tick over 35 Malinda (or Mali) was also a more than useful off break bowler.

Mali scored over 9,500 first class runs during his career.

Since retiring from cricket and even whilst still playing some of Malinda’s experience includes

  • Seven years coaching and playing in England
  • Batting Coach for the Sri Lankan national Women’s team
  • Batting coach for the Sri Lankan Emerging and Sri Lankan A Men’s teams
  • Head coach of the Sri Lankan National League team Kandy
  • Director of Cricket at St Peters College in Sri Lanka for four years

Malinda is an ICC Level 3 accredited coach and comes with excellent references from among others former Sri Lankan player and now commentator Russell Arnold.

Malinda arrived in the country just under two weeks ago and is quickly coming to grips with the local cricket scene and our Club in particular.

It is prudent to acknowledge here some of the organisations that have assisted us in getting Malinda to our Club

  • Rutherford and Bond Toyota Porirua for their generous assistance in making a vehicle available for Malinda
  • 1841 Bar and Café-thank you Jono for agreeing to be the major sponsor of the vehicle which Malinda has at his disposal
  • Our major funding partner New Zealand Community Trust for their generous backing of our initiative
  • Our existing major club sponsors-Russell Properties Limited and Kilbirnie Sports

Club President Alan Isaac commented-” this is a major and bold  initiative that the Club is taking and one that we are confident will assist us to grow further our playing base and player resource; develop top class cricketers and ensure that we can and maintain our position in the Wellington cricket landscape”

Malinda is already working on some major initiatives which we believe will take the club to the next levels and these include

  • Establishment of a bilateral arrangements with English clubs Malinda was associated with where opportunities will be developed for us to send promising players to the UK for further experience and likewise for UK Clubs to send players out to us for the same reasons
  • Developing relationships with Sri Lankan based spin bowling and pace bowling academies to enable talented committed players to further develop their skills in those sort of environments
  • The establishment of a Johnsonville Cricket Club Future Players programme where selected players will be invited to pursue a coaching and training path with us whilst they are at secondary school as well as playing games against other likeminded progressive clubs and associations
  • We will shortly be releasing the first initiative which will be  subsidised one on one coaching for any player registered to the club

Malinda is and will continue to be actively involved in the training and coaching of a number of our teams-specifically he will be working with our Premier Men and Women; our Premier Reserve Men and division 2 women’s squads as well as our 3rd X1 Men’s team and our Girls Hardball players. After an initial settling in period Malinda will be using Saturday game days to be actively involved in the pre-game warm ups as well as an active role during the course of the game for a number of those teams to better prepare himself for areas of “work ons” that teams and players need.

He is also helping out the coaching teams of three of our squads who will be travelling to the Hawkes Bay in January for the annual Hawkes Bay Cricket Camps-the Year 6, 7 and 8 teams prior to them attending and will also be looking after the Club Colts Year 11-13 team when they start their programme of games next Sunday 17 December with a tournament in January and further one off games in February and March.

We are sure that you will join with us in welcoming Malinda to both New Zealand and in particular our Club.


Welcome Malinda!


If you have any enquiries please direct them to either info@jcc.org.nz or email Malinda directly at coachingdirector@jcc.org.nz