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Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Wednesday, 3 November 2021 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Sa’adi Thawfeeq
Whilst our men cricketers battle it out in the T20 World Cup in UAE, Sri Lanka’s women cricketers are preparing themselves for the ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier, which will take place in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 21 November-5 December.
The 17-member squad picked for the World Cup Qualifier will go into a bio-bubble from today at the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel till their departure to Zimbabwe on 15 November.
During this period the squad members will play three intra-squad 50-over practice matches on 5, 8 and 11 November at the P. Sara Oval. One team will be a mixed combination of eight boys from the Kalutara district.
Sri Lanka are grouped with Netherlands, Ireland, West Indies, Papua New Guinea in Group A while Group B comprises Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, USA and Zimbabwe. The top three teams from the qualifier will progress to the 2022 Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand from 4 March-3 April.
Sri Lanka’s Group A fixtures: 23 November: v Netherlands, 25 November: v Ireland, 27 November: v West Indies, 29 November: v Papua New Guinea.
To reach the level of cricket played by countries like England, Australia and New Zealand for instance, Hashan Tillakaratne, the Head Coach of the Sri Lanka Women’s cricket team, is of the view that our women lack the belief and knowledge.
“There are certain situations that we need to manage. For that you need the knowledge and it wasn’t there. Also, they must believe in themselves that they can compete with international stars, the belief wasn’t there” said Tillakaratne.
“You can control only your performance and we didn’t have that confidence earlier. They are much better now. We played five practice ODIs and three of the players scored hundreds which is a tough feat. The bowling path is also improving, we have a solid bowling attack. We have to work on our fielding a little bit. It is a little below par. If we can save 20-25 runs on the field it will be a big advantage for us,” he said.
Tillakaratne said that apart from Captain Chamari Atapattu, the team lacked big boundary hitters. “We need to overcome that, so we need to work around a lot of singles and rotate the strike and bring the dot balls down to at least 110 and increase the singles to 120. At the moment, it is 180 dot balls and we have brought it down to 150 which is still not good enough. They used to run 50-60 singles and we are pushing them for 120 singles.”
Chamari is currently playing in Women’s Big Bash League in Australia, representing Perth Scorchers, and is due to return to Sri Lanka on 12 November and join with the rest of the team. So far, Chamari has had a very ordinary run with the bat scoring 57 runs from five matches with a top score of 20.
“Chamari won’t be playing any practice matches in Sri Lanka but she will have a few game scenarios before she leaves for the World Cup Qualifier,” said Tillakaratne.
Sri Lanka Women World Cup Qualified Squad: Chamari Atapattu (Captain), Harshitha Madavi (Vice-Captain), Inoka Ranaweera, Nilakshi de Silva, Hasini Perera, Sugandika Kumari, Oshadi Ranasinghe, Ama Kanchana, Udeshika Probodhani, Achini Kulasuriya, Anushka Sanjeewani, Kavisha Dilhari, Tharika Sewwandi, Prasadini Weerakkody, Imesha Dulani, Vishmi Rajapaksha, Sachini Nisansala.
