Loss to White Ferns in WT20 World Cup spurred us to win says Athapaththu

Chamari Athapaththu receives the Player of the Match award at the end of the first WODI against New Zealand from Consultant of Women’s Cricket Operations and Development Manuja Kariyapperuma

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

It was New Zealand that knocked them out of a place in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa in February this year, but on Tuesday Sri Lanka gained sweet revenge for that defeat when they beat the Silver Ferns by nine wickets in the first WODI at the Galle International Cricket Stadium to go one-up in the three-match series.

For Sri Lanka it was their first ever win over New Zealand in any white ball format and it was made possible by their outstanding leader and batter Chamari Athapatthu who carved out a match-winning unbeaten century to lead her team to victory.

“We have beaten some of the top teams in the world. In 2013 we beat England and likewise in the T20 World Cup we beat hosts South Africa. This is a creditable victory for us. I cannot rate this with the other wins but as a team this win is very important,” said Athapaththu at the post-match press conference.

“For the past six months we have been playing well, in the T20 World Cup, against Bangladesh and today. Unfortunately for us we missed out on a chance of getting into the knockout stage of the T20 World Cup because we were beaten by New Zealand. But today I think we gained our revenge for that loss.”

“Before we came to this match we knew that we had not won a single game against New Zealand, so we were determined to set that record straight. However we didn’t want to put that into our heads but followed our plans and the processes and made the changes when required to emerge victorious.”

Athapaththu said the current series was important for the ICC Women’s Championships rankings. “We need to come up the points table. We lost to India 3-0 and against Bangladesh we had two games ending in no-results because of rain and we won only one. We have two more games in the current series and we hope to play well and win. If we do that, we can come within the first five in the standings. That is our goal.”

The first ODI was reduced to a 28-over affair because of wet ground conditions due to overnight rain and New Zealand who won the toss and batted first scored 170-5.

“Initially we planned to keep them to a total of around 150 but they managed to go beyond that and get 170-5 because the wicket was good for batting and the wind was blowing from one side of the ground,” said Athapaththu.

“I told my batters that we can chase this total down if we bat well, especially the start we get in the power play will have a great bearing on the result. So we decided to go for the runs in the power play and it worked out well for us because we didn’t lose any wickets in that period.”

In the first power play Sri Lanka scored 39-0 in comparison to New Zealand’s 23-1.“After the power play we tried as much as possible to hit the gaps and run ones and twos and hit the loose balls towards the side the wind was blowing. I got a lot of support from Vishmi (Gunaratne). She is playing better than her age (17 years). That is the most important thing for her future. She scored her maiden WODI fifty. There is a big improvement in our batting in our last two matches. We have to give a lot of credit to our head coach Rumesh Ratnayake and our batting coach Malinda Warnapura. Likewise the other coaches as well who have helped us. It is a combination of their contributions that has been the secret to our success in this game.”

Athapaththu said that her team adjusted to the conditions in Galle better than New Zealand and that is why they were able to win.

“If you take the two sides, the New Zealand team has batters with better strike rates than us. We have to accept that. They have 5-6 players who play in franchises around the world. We adjusted according to the situation and conditions. That was the most important thing. This is the first time New Zealand are playing here and I believe they were unable to adjust to the conditions. We gave them a good fight and because we did our basics right we were able to win.”

The second WODI is scheduled to be played on Friday at Galle.