Coach Manoj Prabhakar has officially parted company with the Nepal national cricket team, said Cricket Association of Nepal on Thursday.

“Manoj Prabhakar has stepped down from his position of Nepal men’s national cricket team’s head coach with immediate effect on December 15, 2022,” the cricket governing body said on its Facebook page.

“CAN has accepted his resignation and wishes him the best for his future.”

The former Indian allrounder had returned to his home country on Monday after agreeing with CAN to step down from the position following Nepal’s humiliating performance in Windhoek in the Namibia-Nepal-Scotland Tri Series of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup League 2.

The 59-year-old coach replaced Pubudu Dassanayake as head coach on August 8 and had promised a “massive reform in the Nepali batting techniques” and “win a maximum number of matches” in the League 2.

Ironically, it was the batting fall-out in Windhoek—where Nepal couldn’t cross the 200-run total in any of the four matches—that put his job on a knife-edge.

Nepal failed to win any matches in the Namibia capital, earning just one point from possible eight points up for grabs thanks to the rain that washed out the Rhinos’ first match against the hosts.

The catastrophic series not only dented Nepal’s hopes of directly qualifying for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe next year but also put their One-Day International status at a serious risk.

The undesired outcome left Nepal in the sixth position with just 18 points from 24 matches. They now must win at least nine of their remaining 12 matches to finish inside the fifth position to keep their One-Day status.

Prabhakar had come under fire for needlessly interfering with the batting line up. The coach benched Karan KC, who is considered one of the most reliable batters down the lower order. Later, he had to include him in the starting line up owing to pressure from CAN. He had also demoted Dipendra Singh Airee to number seven and dropped allrounder Mohammad Adil Alam for the Namibia Tri Series.

But the coach’s downfall just four months after his appointment had unfolded in the Kenya Tour in August and September—his first assignment as coach.

Nepal won both five-match Twenty20 International Series and three-match ODI series in Nairobi to give coach Prabhakar a fairytale start but his confrontation with Aarif Sheikh and Aasif Sheikh made him adopt an unlikely approach to Nepali batting order that ultimately proved too costly for him.

Prabhakar’s squabble with the cricketers had continued in the UAE series win at home ground in November as well.

According to CAN officials, the coach, before heading to India, had told them in a “private meeting” on Sunday that “the players need to be disciplined first and as long as these players are in the squad it would not matter whoever they appoint as a coach”.

The resignation of the underperforming coach leaves Nepali cricket at peace but the Rhinos have a lot of work to do if they are to retain the ODI status earned in 2018.