Unity and team spirit key to Navy SC winning Major Women’s Limited Over tournament

 The champions Navy SC Women’s cricket team

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Navy SC Women’s Coach Ramachandran Sridhar

Sri Lanka Navy SC led by national women’s cap Hansini Perera carried all before them to emerge champions of the Sri Lanka Cricket Major Limited-Over Women’s tournament finishing unbeaten in their

seven matches that enabled them to finish on top of the league standings a clear four points from runner-up Air Force SC A.

In some ways it was sweet revenge for the Navy lasses for the last time the tournament was held in 2019, they lost the final to Air Force SC by three runs to end as runner-up. Prior to that in 2018 Navy SC were joint champions with Army SC after the final was washed out by rain without a ball bowled.

All these achievements Navy SC were attained with Ramachandran Sridhar as their head coach. Sridhar who played first-class cricket for Moors SC and SSC as a left-arm spinner is little known in the field of coaching. He was one time assistant to coaches Ruvin Peiris and Champaka Ramanayake at Moors SC.

Navy SC’s victory was described by Sridhar in two words – unity and team spirit.

“We focused on a vision that come what may we will become the champs this year. We motivated ourselves to win. There was also motivation through bonuses like scoring runs and taking wickets introduced this year but the players didn’t think so big of the bonuses but were more focused and were determined to win the title after missing it by a mere three runs to Air Force SC last year,” said Sridhar.

“If you take the experience and the number of international caps in our side we are the most experienced team in the tournament. There are nine national players including three former captains Shashikala Siriwardene, Inoka Ranaweera and Eshani Lokusooriya,” continued Sridhar.

“The national pool players have amongst them the team spirit and they have a great unity. Whatever they do the players are always together. Before they turn up for a match they all stay at one house and they bond each other well. Our success was the team spirit. Unity comes with the seniors because they are the ones who bring the juniors so they also look after them.”

“We won all our matches through the experienced players. In the match against Air Force Prasadani (Weerakkody) scored 58 and won the match for us she is a senior player, and in the vital match against Army SC we won through the experience of Shashikala (Siriwardene) and Udeshika (Prabodani),” he said.

That Navy SC was able to clinch the title even in the absence of one of their key players Eshani Lokusooriya speaks volumes of the strength in their reserve bench.

“Eshani has an injury she has undergone and operation in her knee and she is unable to run. We played her in one match because of her power hitting but she has not recovered 100%. In the one match she played we put her in the slips because she could not run and she injured her finger. We cannot play her in matches against sides like the Army SC and Air Force SC because they have fleet-footed runners between wickets,” said Sridhar.

Speaking of the opposition Navy SC encountered during the tournament, Sridhar said: “The Air Force and Navy are equally matched sides with national players between the age groups of 33-34 and carrying a lot of experience. The Army team does not have many national cricketers and are a very young side. Although they lack in experience they are an energetic side. 

“Seenigama CC gave us a good fight this time. Most of the recruits in the Navy are from Seenigama. They are very fit than the rest of the players and it shows in the field they have good speed and accurate throws. There was some improvement from the Chilaw Marians CC because some players from Colts CC had crossed over to them.”

“Our strength is our bowling so we tried always to field first. Against weaker opposition we batted first. Our aim was to win the trophy and no one shone individually,” he said.

Inoka Ranaweera who bowls left-arm slow was their key bowler with a record haul of 25 wickets in the tournament. She has won the Best Bowler’s award in the two previous years in 2018 and 2019 and is in line to win it this year as well. She was supported by Shashikala Siriwardene (15 wickets) and Udeshika Prabodani (9). In the batting openers Hasini Perera with 132 runs and her partner Sathya Sandeepani with 145 runs were the leading lights. 

The individual awards including the Player of the Tournament will be announced by Sri Lanka Cricket at their awards night. As champions Navy SC will receive a cheque for Rs. 400,000, Air Force SC A as runner-up will collect Rs. 200,000. The individual awards are Rs. 75,000 each for Best Batswoman and Best Bowler and Rs. 100,000 for the Player of the Tournament.

Navy SC Women’s Squad: Hansini Perera (Captain), Chandima Gunaratne, Chaturi Mihirani, Eshani Lokusooriya, Hansima Karunaratne, Harshani Wijeratne, Harshitha Samarawickrama, , Inoka Ranaweera, Madhuri Samuddika, Nilakshana Sadamini, Prasadani Weerakkody, Sathya Sandeepani, Shashikala Silva, Shashikala Siriwardene, Tharika Sewwandini, and Udeshika Prabodani.