Sri Lanka Women cricketers take off to England

• We have nothing to lose but everything to gain, says Coach Ratnayake

Sri Lanka Women’s cricket team Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake

Sri Lanka Women’s cricket Captain Chamari Athapaththu

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Following their 2-1 triumph over New Zealand in the recent home WODI series, Sri Lanka Women cricketers led by their champion skipper Chamari Athapaththu left with renewed hopes of continuing that success against England Women on their tour of the United Kingdom yesterday.

For the first time in their history Sri Lanka Women beat former World Cup winners New Zealand Women not only in an ODI but also won the three-match series.

The 16-member squad picked for the England tour is pretty much similar to the one that played against New Zealand because unlike the men’s team, the bench strength of the women’s team is rather weak. 

“We don’t have a bench. We have to manage with this lot,” said Sri Lanka Women’s team Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake. “Without bringing Chamari (Athapaththu) into the equation if you take someone like Harshitha (Samarawickrama) or Vishmi (Gunaratne), if something happens to one of them the quality of the replacement will not be the same. That’s the challenge I have. When we come after this tour from October the plan is to expedite the upgrading of that quality.”

Beating four times World Cup champions England in their own conditions is going to be a tough ask for Sri Lanka.

“What a huge opportunity. We are cherished with this opportunity to go and not just participate but to play to our best ability,” said Ratnayake. “We are the underdog here, we are playing a giant. We have beaten one of them, New Zealand and now we are playing another. We have nothing to lose but everything to gain. The pressure is out there but we have to play really good cricket to beat England.”

Even though they are going in the latter part of the English summer, Ratnayake expects the pitches to help seam and swing bowling.

“We’ve recognised that we have to play on green wickets. To find green wickets in Sri Lanka is a tough proposition. But when we played New Zealand at Galle there were green pitches which they shaved off. We had a camp of 11 days in Galle and it was fabulous preparation against a quality provincial super provincial under 17 boys side. We lost all the matches but it didn’t matter because the opposition was great. We have prepared well on a journey which is very challenging and we are going to play the best. The number two in the world.”

“We don’t have brilliant spinners although we have won through spin in the recent past. We have a good enough bowling all-round unit, not exorbitantly brilliant but good enough to at the end of the day, put pressure at the right time and at the right moment. That’s when we can create enough pressure to get wickets.”

The Captain Athapaththu is the key to Sri Lanka winning and this was quite evident during the New Zealand series, but Ratnayake is trying to get the team to try and win without any big contribution from her.

“Chamari is the bonus we have. She is an exceptional player who can win matches. She is of another level, an absolute freak, unbelievable,” said Ratnayake. “Our thinking is how do we win without Chamari? Our preparations were that. The change of mindset for the players is if Chamari gets out for a duck how do we win a match? There were situations like that in matches we played in Galle. There were a lot of super things happening in those scenarios which we can take as positives.”

Sri Lanka plays a warm-up game on 27 August before commencing the three-match WT20I series four days later. Sri Lanka will play against England Women in a three-match WT20I series on 31 August (Hove), 2 September (Chelmsford), and 6 September (Derby d/n), and a three-match WODI series on 9 September (Chester-le-Street), 12 September (Northampton) and 14 September (Leicester). The WODI series will be part of the ICC Women’s Championships. – (ST)

SRI LANKA WOMEN’S TEAM TO ENGLAND

Chamari Athapaththu (Captain), Oshadi Ranasinghe (Vice-Captain), Harshitha Samarawickrama, Vishmi Gunaratne, Nilakshi de Silva, Kaveesha Dilhari, Inoka Ranaweera, Sugandika Kumari, Anushka Sanjeewani (wk), Udeshika Prabodhani, Achini Kulasuriya, Kawya Kavindi, Inoshi Fernando, Hansima Karunaratne, Hasini Perera, Imesha Dulani.