Coach Rumesh Ratnayake illustrates how history was created

Sri Lanka Women's cricket team head coach Rumesh Ratnayake with Sri Lanka Women's cricket team captain Chamari Athapaththu and the WODI series trophy.

 Sri Lanka women’s cricketers enjoy the moment after beating New Zealand in the third and final WODI at Galle to win the series 2-1

• “Women’s cricket has gained momentum and will gain a few gears more”: Head Coach
• Sri Lanka’s 2-1 WODI series win over New Zealand

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Prior to 2023, Sri Lanka last won a women’s bilateral ODI series as far back as 2008 when they beat West Indies 3-2 at home. But within the space of less than two months they have won back-to-back series against Bangladesh (1-0) and now New Zealand (2-1), the latter success being of historic significance because it was the first of its kind in any format against the opposition.

For some time women’s cricket in Sri Lanka has lay dormant most recently during the Covid pandemic when hardly any cricket took place. The national team has gone through many coaches with each of them trying his best to uplift the standard of the national team, but without much success.

When Hashan Tillakaratne, the former Sri Lanka Test Captain who was in charge of the national women’s cricket team took the decision to throw in his lot with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka Cricket first gave Rumesh Ratnayake the post in an interim capacity in November last year and two months later appointed him as Head Coach ahead of the Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa.

The way the Sri Lanka women’s team has shown improvement in the past six months or so is a credit to the way Ratnayake has shaped the team and the environment within the players and support staff in the dressing room.   

“I’ve created a learning environment for each other and to be free. The girls are free to express themselves, there is nothing called right and wrong, and no laughing at answers provided. To achieve that it doesn’t need only the players, the staff also needs to be right and on the same page,” said Ratnayake after Sri Lanka’s historic 2-1 WODI series win over New Zealand.

“When I heard that our target was 195, I came and told them, ‘look here girls, it’s 174 balls and it’s less than seven runs per over, this is our best chance to create history.’ That’s the environment I am creating amongst everybody. Negativity, we have just eradicated as much as we could. It’s a happy and very constructively learning environment I am trying to create. It’s an ongoing process.”

Describing the series victory as “fantastic” Ratnayake said that it was the belief that the girls could do it that won them the series.  

“The first match itself we got it like that. We wanted to do those small things right. They realised when they did that, the big ones came right. If you take yesterday’s match (Monday) there were a few moments of the New Zealand team where they lost it and dropped a couple of catches. Those are the small things that need to be right. It would have been different maybe if they took those catches.”

“The girls believed that they could do it and when it came to 195 when we expected it to be 170. They themselves knew the answers along with what they were going to do. That’s where they are at the moment. They are not only giving answers but they know how to counter and process it as well.”

When asked what this win meant to women’s cricket in Sri Lanka, Ratnayake replied, “It’s very huge, I really don’t know. It’s just unfortunate that these matches were not shown on our TV’s. Women’s cricket has gained momentum and will gain a few gears more. What we are looking at is we need those unusual types of bowlers coming through, the Chamaris and all those things like what’s happening in the men’s section. We need it happening in the women’s as well. The awareness is huge.”

When it was pointed out that both Sri Lanka’s wins were achieved on the back of the Captain Chamari Athapaththu’s century, Ratnayake said, “There were also a lot of positives. In the second WODI we saw Kavisha (Dilhari) scoring her highest. Initially, we watched how the other sides like the Australians, the English, the South Africans and the Indians attacked New Zealand. But after the second game we said we don’t need to watch them, we need to watch our players, that’s all we did in the third match. We are backing our skills and watching ourselves to see what we can do and that’s how we did it.”

Coincidentally, Sri Lanka’s two wins were achieved in rain-interrupted matches, whereas their only loss came when the game was played the full quota of 50 overs a side.

“That’s cricket,” said Ratnayake. “That Sri Lanka has a better chance of winning if the overs are less, so it shows. We have to make sure that when it comes to 50 overs also we should be doing that. We scored 218 runs close to 50 overs in the second WODI without any batsman scoring. Five of our best batters did not make any big contributions, it was just one of them that scored – Kavisha. We take that as a positive and we go forward. There’s lots of learning.”

There was a time when Sri Lanka fell so far behind because of the alarming number of dot balls they played down.

“That was eradicated and we are not even discussing it,” said Ratnayake. “We are going forward knowing that we have to improve in our batting, bowling and fielding. The consistency is what is required now. Yesterday (Monday) on the field, we fielded and bowled well against a good batting unit. In the second game we were putrid.”

The series moves to the P. Sara Oval in Colombo where the two sides will meet in a three-match WT20I series commencing 8 July.

“Our squad will be more or less the same but the dynamics will be different. We are playing against known giants but at the end of the day cricket is won by good skill, the execution of skill and smart options. That’s where we want to thrive. Try our best to be there as much as possible.”