The Afghanistan Cricket Board has brought in some new faces to support the national team. John Mooney, previously with the Ireland national team, is the new fielding coach and Nirmalan Thanabalasingam from Australia is the physiotherapist. Both are already with the team at their training camp as they prepare for upcoming T20 international matches.
John Mooney is not new to international cricket. He played 91 matches for Ireland, including three Cricket World Cups (2007, 2011, 2015) and two T20 World Cups. He has coaching certifications from the England Cricket Board and was the fielding coach of the Afghanistan team from 2018 to 2019. He also worked with the West Indies cricket team in 2019 and has been helping the Ireland Women’s National Team since the start of this year.
Nirmalan Thanabalasingam has a good background in physiotherapy and sports science. He did his Master of Physiotherapy in 2010 and Bachelor of Applied Science in Exercise and Sports Science in 2008 from the University of Sydney. He is officially registered with the Physiotherapy Board of Australia and a member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA).
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Nirmalan is into fixing sports injuries and using exercise to help people recover. Since 2018 he has been the Head Physiotherapist at Concord Sports Medicine. He was also the Team Physiotherapist for the Desert Vipers in the International League T20 since 2020. Before that he was the High Performance Training & Rehab Manager for Sri Lanka Cricket from March 2017 to June 2018.
He has a lot of experience in sports having worked with Cricket NSW, Rangpur Riders (BPL), Montreal Tigers (GT20 – Canada), ICC World XI, Sydney Thunder (BBL), and the West Harbour Rugby Union Club.
The Afghanistan team is currently training in Abu Dhabi. They are preparing for the Tri-Nation T20I Series against Pakistan and the UAE and the ACC Men’s T20I Asia Cup in 2025.
