Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Tuesday, 11 June 2024 00:06 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka women’s cricket team Captain Chamari Athapaththu and Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayakewith Sunquick Lanka Managing Director Mangala Perera (extreme left) and Singer Sri Lanka Marketing Director Janmesh Anthony (second from left) at yesterday’s media briefing
By Sa’adi Thawfeeq
Sri Lanka Women cricketers who have outshone our men’s cricket team in the white ball format with wins against strong opposition like New Zealand, England and South Africa, take on another strong opponent the West Indies in a series of 3 WODIs and 3 WT20Is at the Mahinda Rajapaksa Cricket Stadium in Hambantota from 15 June.
For Sri Lanka the WODI series is important if they are to gain automatic qualification for the next Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2025 in India.
“This is going to be an important series for us especially the three ODIs to get direct qualification for the Women’s 50-over World Cup,” said Sri Lanka women’s Captain Chamari Athapaththu at a media conference held at Hilton Residencies yesterday to introduce the team sponsors for the series.
“We have only six matches this year, 3 against the West Indies and 3 against Ireland. Out of this we need to win at least five of them to gain direct qualification. We hope to take one game at a time and play well to our ability.”
Sri Lanka are currently placed eighth in the ICC Women’s Championship 2022-25 standings, one rank below West Indies who are seventh. Both teams need to finish in the first six to qualify directly for the World Cup or end up playing in the World Cup Qualifier.
Elaborating on the game plan for the ODI series, Athapaththu said, “We want to improve our batting because we are going to play on good batting tracks. The team that bats best will win the series. The West Indies have played good cricket in these few months, so have we. On most occasions we won matches through our bowlers. Now I think there are batters who can win matches for us. We have a balanced team. The West Indies have a lot of right handers, so we have devised a plan against them especially spinners there are a lot of experienced left-arm spinners in the squad. Likewise, there are some youngsters as well.”
Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake who is playing a pivotal role in moulding these women cricketers into a winning unit said that they would like to play the series on good tracks. “Just because we are playing at home many teams in the past that I was with used to go with spin tracks. But I realised when you go with that, it does not help our cricket because our batters suffer, and our spinners get into a notion of thinking that they have done extremely well. It does not give a true picture. Against New Zealand, we played on good tracks, and they won some matches and we won some. Eventually we won the series. We want to give a fair chance to both teams and we want to play on good tracks.”
Ratnayake said the team preparations for the series have been the same other than for specific teams.
“West Indies we have analysed them and in our preparations, we want even the net bowlers to be specifically aligned with that type of thinking. It’s very specifically done as we would always do.”
Ratnayake said a 16-member team has been picked for the ODI series, which has not been released to the media yet.
Singer Sri Lanka PLC has come forward as the Sri Lanka team sponsor, Sunquick Lanka Pvt Ltd as the Sri Lanka team back of the jersey sponsor and, Nippon Paints, Sri Lanka as the Sri Lanka team’s lead arm sponsor.
The match dates:
