Sri Lanka Women’s cricket captain Chamari Athapaththu

• Excited about youngsters’ performance in Bangladesh series

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Sri Lanka Women’s cricket team captain Chamari Athapaththu said that the blending of young players with the experienced was the key to their success over Bangladesh in the two series (WODI and WT20I) and predicted a bright future for the women’s game in the country with the rise of young stars.

“I am very happy with the performances of new players like Harshitha (Samarawickrama), Kavisha (Dilhari), Vishmi (Gunaratne), Kawya Kavi-ndi who made her debut in the series and also experienced players like Inoka (Ranaweera), Oshadee (Ranasinghe), Nilakshi (de Silva) and Sugandika (Kumari). These players blended well together. That is the secret to our success against Bangladesh,” said Chamari after Sri Lanka had beaten Bangladesh by 44 runs to take the WT20I series 2-1.

Following defeat in the first WT20I, Chamari said they always spoke about the positives in the dressing room. 

“What we decided was to take the positives to the next match. At team meetings we didn’t speak much about the mistakes we made that was the most important aspect, but spoke about the positives and motivated the players. Normally, when you lose a match, you suffer a mental setback but that didn’t happen because our coach Rumesh Ratnayake did a lot to motivate the team. The results prove that,” said Chamari.

Success had come to Sri Lanka after a lapse of eight years when they last won a bilateral T20I series – against Pakistan (2-1) in the UAE.

“We worked very hard during those years. There were occasions when things that we tried out went right and other occasions when it didn’t go right. We had several coaches as well as captains in that period,” said Chamari. “I can say that finally we have got a good team together and I expect them to do big things in world cricket during the year. We have series coming up against strong teams like New Zealand and England and I expect the younger and experienced players to perform and bring victory to Sri Lanka.”One thing that stood out during the Bangladesh series was youngsters coming to the fore. 

“We worked very hard to bring them to this level. We gave a lot of opportunities to young players and they took their chances and performed. A lot of people criticised me for giving certain players more opportunities than others. I don’t regret doing that. 

“Especially a player like Harshita, when I gave her an opportunity in 2016 to play, many people laughed at me, but you can see the results of it today. You cannot get results instantly, you have to work hard and put in a lot of effort. I get a lot of pleasure when I see players like Harshita performing well. I can also see that from Vishmi, (Imesha) Dulani and Kavisha. I believe that they will work hard towards bringing a World Cup to Sri Lanka one day,” Chamari predicted hopefully.

The Lankan skipper had a relatively ordinary series by her lofty standards, but she was happy that Sri Lanka won without her contributing anything big.

“I am quite happy with my performance in the ODI’s. I performed well in the T20Is as well and managed to score 30s in all three matches but was unable to convert them into big innings. All the time people say that Sri Lanka won on the back of my performances but I can say that in this series, it was not so, the youngsters came to the fore,” said Chamari. 

“I have been trying to do it for years and now it has borne fruit. I am happy that players like Kavisha, Harshitha and Kavindi with their skills are our future and they should be given every opportunity to take women’s cricket forward. As for me, we have a series coming against an experienced New Zealand side at home. I am hoping to perform well against such a strong team after rectifying my mistakes.”

Asked how it felt to have their former coach Hashan Tillakaratne in the opposition’s camp, Chamari replied, “It was a big challenge playing against Bangladesh who is now coached by one of our former coaches. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. Likewise, we also had an idea of how he plans for a match. We had a good contest. I must thank Hashan Tillakaratne for under him we became Asia Cup runner-up. He is a good coach and I wish him well.”