Shot in the arm for women’s cricket

 Sri Lanka women cricketers practicing at the P. Sara Oval, which is their new cricket centre

• SLC-Tamil Union sign MOU to set up women’s cricket centre at P. Sara Oval

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Sri Lanka Women cricketers received a shot in the arm when Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and Tamil Union C&AC signed an MOU to set up a women’s cricket centre at the club grounds at the P. Sara Oval for a period of 10 years.

According to Manuja Kariyapperuma, the consultant who is in charge of women’s cricket international and domestic operations and development at SLC, it was a long felt need for the women cricketers to have a training facility of their own. All these years they have trained with the men’s cricketers at the High Performance Centre at Khettarama.

“It’s a huge boost for the women cricketers because earlier we had to give away for men’s cricket whenever a tour come up and there is hardly any space for us. We are now on our own, which we never had,” said Kariyapperuma.

“We established a Memorandum of Understanding for 10 years with Tamil Union to use their facilities for women’s cricket. We will have all the facilities, the swimming pool, the centre wickets, the side nets and also the indoor nets. Now we have our own practice facilities. Tamil Union are also practicing but not at the times that we are. We practice for about four to five hours and that is set aside. We are doing it in such a way that we don’t mix with the men players. They will commence their practice after we leave the grounds. In the case of matches, depending on the situation, it will be either Tamil Union or we will hire a ground and play the matches,” he said.

Elaborating further Kariyapperuma said, “We started practices from 1 January but we had to do it in small groups; full groups we started from 15 January. Tamil Union had all the facilities but all of it was going waste, so we thought we will make use of it because our entire contingent of 35-40 players can practice there every day. This is a real ongoing thing.”

“We can expect better and improved performances from our women cricketers because the practice hours are more, but however much you practice you have to go to the middle and play. That’s a different thing, but at least we have given them all that are required. We’ve even give them meals – breakfast, lunch and a snack,” continued Kariyapperuma.

“We will be doing a dormitory as well within a short period of time. You get quite a lot of girls who are talented and staying outside and when suddenly these lockdowns happen they have no place to go. SLC spends quite a lot of money keeping them in hotels and things like that. I have suggested we improve upon the old media centre on the swimming pool side and convert that into a dormitory. That will take about another one to two months. It has been approved in principle by the ExCo,” he said. This new change of environment is a huge boost to the women cricketers who are preparing for the 2021 Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier which will be hosted by Sri Lanka in June-July this year.

“If we qualify we can play in the 2022 Women’s World Cup which will be held in New Zealand in March. These qualifiers are played for that. The Commonwealth Games are scheduled for 2022 at Birmingham and we have to qualify for that also because our rankings are down. That is the very reason I told the management that if we go on like this on a sharing basis with the men, we will never improve; it has to be a separate facility. I am sure we will be able to find young talent and improve their performance,” Kariyapperuma said.

Sri Lanka women are currently ranked ninth in ODIs and eighth in T20Is.