West Indies tour good learning curve ahead of Women’s Asia Cup – Head Coach Ratnayake

Sri Lanka women encountered problems with Afy Fletcher’s leg-spin

In just over a fortnight from today, Sri Lanka will host the Women’s T20 Asia Cup in Dambulla and the Sri Lanka women’s cricket team Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake is of the view that the recently concluded Women’s T20I series against West Indies was a good eye-opener for them.

Sri Lanka, who rested five of their key players for the series to give some of the younger players exposure at this level, lost the three-match series 2-1, but it was a learning curve for them with the Asia Cup around the corner.

Playing against quality leg-spin bowling is one area in which Sri Lanka found they were slightly lacking. Sri Lanka struggled to come to terms with West Indies’ experienced leggie Afy Fletcher. She took eight wickets in the three WODI matches, including 4/23 in the second game, helping West Indies level the series.  

“They had this leg-spinner Fletcher, a seasoned campaigner and a good leggie. She came and put the brakes on a little bit. In the last game I thought we countered her well, after she took four wickets in the second,” said Ratnayake. “It’s an area we should sharpen ourselves in. Every leg spinner is different from Bangladesh to New Zealand, England, and South Africa. We have come across them and we played them quite okay. We simulated and we counter-attacked. We don’t have a good leggie, which is the problem. We want someone who bowls slow leggies like the West Indian. We simulate boys with various pacers.”

Sri Lanka threw in 15-year-old wrist spinner Shashini Gimhani to the deep end to see how well she would fare. Unfortunately for her, she came onto bowl in the 11th over when West Indies were on a roll, and the one over she bowled cost 10 runs. “It was not her best but she can learn from that experience.”

What the West Indies series exposed was that the Sri Lankan top and middle order batters needed to buckle themselves down to play longer innings after getting set. “We were not all that brilliant in that particular area – the top order batting. We were 20 runs short in all matches. Batters got into position to make big scores and got dismissed. They showed a little bit of vulnerability when playing leg-spin. Those are areas that we have to work on,” said Ratnayake.

“Even the two matches we lost we brought it down to the last 15th over and the third match, it went until all but the last ball of the 20th over. In that context, I am very happy where we are. It is always good to win but I will take the second best as a good positive. The series provided fantastic lessons to work on. I am happy we did it with a group such as this.” (ST)