Asia Cup 2022: Sri Lanka's coded signals from dressing room bewilders fans and experts

The all-important Asia Cup clash between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka has been an action-packed encounter so far, but the fans and experts were bewildered during the Sri Lankan bowling innings when Sri Lankan coach Chris Silverwood sent coded messages to the Sri Lankan captain and his players.

The Sri Lankan team won the toss and decided to bowl first in the virtual knockout match as the winner of the match would progress through to the Super 4 stage of the tournament. During the first innings, Sri Lanka's team analyst along with Head Coach Chris Silverwood was seen displaying cryptic messages via clipboards. The codes read “2D” and “D5”.

The commentators suggested that it could be a tactical message that the coach was trying to deliver to the Sri Lankan skipper regarding the bowling changes. In reality, this is not the first time that the former English coach has used such tactics. He had used similar tactics to communicate with England players during his stint as the head coach of the English team in a series against South Africa in 2020.

Sri Lankan coach passing the information to the players on the ground, did the same when he was the England coach. pic.twitter.com/QeJOuFGxGz

— Johns. (@CricCrazyJohns) September 1, 2022

Silverwood was criticized for his tactics by Michael Vaughan in 2020

Former England captain Michael Vaughan had criticized the practice by Silverwood, who used to communicate to the then England skipper Eoin Morgan via used real-time coded signals from the dressing room. Morgan had defended the England head coach at the time stating that it was within the spirit of the game and they were trying to utilize the data from the players.

"100 percent, (it's) within the spirit of the game. There's nothing untoward about it. It's about maximizing the information that we're taking in, and measuring it against things (like) coaches' recommendations, the data, what's going on," Morgan was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo

Meanwhile, The Sri Lankan bowlers were punished in the latter stages of the first innings as the Bangladeshi lower order took full advantage of some lackluster bowling by the inexperienced Sri Lankan pacers to propel the Bangladeshi score to 183/7 at the end of the 20 overs.