Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
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Chamari Athapaththu at the post-match media conference
Putting aside the 10-wicket defeat they suffered at the hands of defending champions Australia, Sri Lanka are aiming at creating history by going all out to win their final Group 1 match against New Zealand at Paarl on Sunday and qualify for a place in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup for the first time.
“We are in good momentum because you know we played two good games and we won two games and today’s game (vs Australia) also we played really well. I’m not worried about the game against Australia because we are playing against the world champion team.
“So, experience wise, skill wise they’re on top but our team have very young players and I’m really happy about our performance. I think if we can continue this performance in the next game, and if we play our best, definitely we can beat New Zealand and go through the semi-finals and hopefully we can change history,” said Sri Lanka women captain Chamari Athapaththu.
“We are playing our next game in Paarl, it’s a bit of a slower wicket. So, we have to adjust to those conditions, especially when we have to play some shots. Another thing we have to handle are the spinners. I can mention they have two good spinners in the New Zealand team. “We have to look at them, what they are planning and they have to rethink about it. We have a few plans. So tomorrow and the day after tomorrow we have our training sessions and we try to adjust that area in the next game.”
“New Zealand are not in their mode in this tournament and we know that. But we never underestimate New Zealand because they have a lot of good players. We will try to play positive cricket and try to beat them. I always say to my team ‘play your natural game don’t take any pressure, because anything can happen in this format’, especially the T20 format. Stick with our plans and back our skills and play our natural game.” Athapaththu put down Sri Lanka’s 10-wicket loss to Australia for not putting up enough runs on the board. “Actually, we have to score 150 plus runs on that wicket, otherwise we cannot win because Australia has a good batting lineup. We batted really well, but from the 15th over we didn’t execute our plans, we struggled a lot, and the Australian bowlers were bowling the right areas. Their bowling is really good.
“This wicket was very friendly for the spinners and slow. We had to stay there and take singles, doubles and build a partnership, but we couldn’t hit boundaries every time and sixes on it. But the thing is we didn’t execute our plans because we played a lot of dot balls in the middle overs. That’s the reason why we couldn’t build good partnerships.”
