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Chamari Athapaththu and Harshitha Samarawickrama
By Sa’adi Thawfeeq
Sri Lanka Women’s Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake said that playing in the ICC Women’s Championship (ODI) 2022-2025 would be of immense benefit to a country like Sri Lanka to improve the standard of women’s cricket internationally.
“This cycle is fantastic because it is giving our girls the exposure they would not have got and it’s played on a points system. Our progress can be huge. The mere fact that these matches are shown on television is also going to be huge. That’s an exposure we did not have,” said Ratnayake after Sri Lanka had won the three-match WODI series 1-0 against Bangladesh with two of the matches ending in no-results due to bad weather.
“We would have loved to have played all three ODI matches. It would have helped us greatly in our ICC Women’s Championship standings.”
Today Sri Lanka commences a three-match WT20I series with Bangladesh at the SSC starting at 10 a.m.
The ICC Women’s Championship is being contested by 10 teams to determine qualification for the 2025 Women’s Cricket World Cup with the top five teams along with the hosts India qualifying directly, and the bottom four teams and the top two teams from the Women’s ODI rankings progressing to a Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier tournament. Each team plays a total of eight three-match WODI series, with four of them played at home and four played away.
Following their win over Bangladesh, Sri Lanka are seventh in the standings with six points from nine matches, the same number of points as Australia, England and South Africa who have played a lesser number of games. They began the cycle with a 2-1 series loss to Pakistan (away) and a 3-0 loss to India (home) before taking on Bangladesh.
Sri Lanka’s next assignment in the ICC Women’s Championship cycle is hosting New Zealand for a bilateral (3 WODIs and 3 WT20Is) in June and then travelling to the UK to play England in a similar series (3 WODIs, 3 WT20Is). Sri Lanka has to play West Indies at home and South Africa and Ireland away to complete their cycle of 24 matches.
“Our overall goals are doing well against those teams, but one day to be like Australia,” said Ratnayake. “I gave them an example of how we beat Australia in the Men’s World Cup final in 1996. No one expected us to do that but the belief, the trust, the attitude and the professionalism the side had was what made them win the World Cup. I am trying to make them believe that you can have professionalism without money. It’s the mindset. My ambition as a coach would be to take Sri Lanka close to where Australia is. We have had close shaves with India. Those close shaves can be converted to our side.”
With the Women’s T20 World Cup scheduled for 2024 and the Women’s fifty-over World Cup for 2025, Sri Lanka have only the Asian Games in China in September to concentrate on for this year. “There are about eight countries vying for a medal and we are one of the four major teams.”
Since taking over the position of Head Coach of the National Women’s Cricket team last December, Ratnayake sees a lot of progress being made.
“I am trying to create an environment which is free to go and express themselves. I alone cannot do that the whole group has to contribute from the manager downwards. Everybody has to be on the same page, there should not be any negativity but constructive criticism,” said Ratnayake. “From the time I came everybody said the batting has been the problem. Every day they would be talking about batting. I said we are not going to talk about batting but let’s sort out things. At the end of the day, it’s small things which matter, small things done correctly, that’s the freedom they are showing now. We are looking for consistency. We need consistency in batting, otherwise it becomes like a fluke.”
“They have a clear mind, they know their roles, they will have to go and perform the way they have to. If they fail, that’s okay, we’ll address that. If there is an issue, we sort it out. That’s the environment I am trying to build up. At the moment I am getting good support from Sri Lanka Cricket because I went and expressed what I want to do and they said to go ahead.”
For several years Sri Lanka’s success has revolved around largely on the success of their Captain Chamari Athapaththu, a powerfully built all-rounder who has the ability to change a game with her power hitting or her tantalising off-breaks.
“Now we want to win without Chamari,” said Ratnayake. “What I have drilled into the girls is that we have to win matches without her. You’ll have to take the leadership you are all capable. They may not have the power of Chamari to hit over the outfield, but we don’t need that. We need power against certain teams. If Chamari scores it’s a bonus, but if it is not, we should be able to do it. Everybody goes out with a positive mind basically, eyes ready, hands ready, that’s what matters with batting.”
“Apart from Chamari we have other types like Harshitha (Samarawickrama) who are more architectural, very lovely to watch. There is Vishmi (Gunaratne) who has a little bit of Chamari and Harshitha. We have a girl called Imesha (Dulani) an unknown quantity at the moment but looks great potential, Kavisha (Dilhari) is another lovely player who has great potential of being a super all-rounder, equally good in her batting and bowling, but she needs the runs and wickets to prove it. We are just going by the potential. The only name I can mention who has potential and has done something is Harshitha.”
“In the bowling our spinners are really fantastic but I think it can be better. We can’t take it for granted, the left-armer needs to beat the outside edge and the off-spinner needs to hit the pads. Fast bowling, we don’t have much but we are working on it. We have three fast bowlers, one got injured in the T20 World Cup so we have two. There is a youngster (Kawya Kavindi) who has not played a match but at some stage I would play her. She will be a sensation in the future.”
