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Sri Lanka Women’s Captain Chamari Athapaththu
South Africa Women’s Captain Laura Wolvaardt
By Sa’adi Thawfeeq
Sri Lanka Women led by their most experienced and versatile cricketer Chamari Athapaththu will commence a three-match T20I series against South Africa Women at Benoni today with their shock three-run defeat of the hosts in the 2023 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup opener at Cape Town still fresh on their minds.
In that game Athapaththu’s knock of 68 off 50 balls gave Sri Lanka are decent total of 129-4 which they were able to defend superbly by keeping South Africa tied down to 126-9 largely through some excellent bowling by their spinners Inoka Ranaweera, Oshadi Ranasinghe and Sugandika Kumari who took seven wickets between them. All three spinners are part of the current squad of 17 members and will be keenly looking forward to renewing their rivalry.
Despite the initial setback, South Africa, the hosts went onto regain their composure and make it to the final of the T20 World Cup where they lost to Australia, whereas Sri Lanka failed to make it to the top two of their group being edged out on net run rate despite having the same number of wins and losses as South Africa.
“That win is something that we will use as a morale booster to start the series off,” said Sri Lanka Women’s head coach Rumesh Ratnayake. “Those are the things that we will be talking about, what strengths and vulnerabilities they have. We must not forget that they were the finalists in the World Cup. They almost beat Australia last year. Our first game was against them and we gave them a rude shock. It doesn’t mean that we are on top of them. On our day we did our best. South Africa are a strong team and we have prepared ourselves likewise. We know their strengths and weaknesses. We will be looking at both angles and how to contain them and most of the time how we can attack and defend.”
South Africa are currently ranked no. 5 and Sri Lanka no. 7 in the ICC Women’s T20I team rankings.
“We are going into the match quite well prepared except for the fact that we haven’t had any night practices under lights where most of our games will be played. But it shouldn’t worry us or the girls. It is a matter of getting adjusted and making up our minds,” said Ratnayake.
“Even in Sri Lanka we couldn’t get any practice games under lights because it is the height of the cricket season and it involves a huge cost to get a night game in. I understand the constraints. Playing cricket under lights is a challenge. To make the mindset of the girls we have all got to get together and make sure that it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Even in South Africa, Sri Lanka has not yet got an opportunity to practice under lights.
“I’ve found that a bit strange even though our liaison officer has said that she will try to get us one day of practice at some stage but not before the first T20I match, but before the ODIs. It shouldn’t be in our minds before we start the matches.”
However, according to Ratnayake all the girls have at some stage or another played under lights in South Africa and in England.
Once more the main focus will be on the captain Chamari Athapaththu to deliver if Sri Lanka are to be successful.
“Chamari is certainly our main cog but in the past four months while she was playing franchise cricket in Australia, New Zealand and India it gave us a chance to play practice games against the U17 boys without her and have our batters achieve some targets,” said Ratnayake. “Hopefully, that has become a blessing in disguise for us. We had about eight games and we worked on what we wanted to achieve. Starting off it was not all that great, but towards the end the last 3-4 matches were really good, we achieved our targets.”
Last year was a good one for Sri Lanka Women’s cricket with victories achieved against New Zealand, England and Bangladesh in the ODI and T20I formats.
What did the team take out of those victories?
“We came to the realization that small things done well at the right moment consistently gives us a better chance of a win all the time,” said Ratnayake. “As a coach I should not be content with it, I want to do better than that. The targets we’ve set are slightly higher. We play to win, the girls are very smart and want to do well. We can only do our best and hope that everything works out well.”
South Africa are quite aware of what Sri Lanka are capable of. “Sri Lanka is a very talented squad, we know what they bring. All the subcontinent teams are very spin-dominant and they’re very good at their skill. It’s also a bit concerning that (Chamari) Athapaththu didn’t score in the WPL, so she’s due for some runs. We’re playing at grounds where sometimes it’s very spin-conducive, so it’s going to be a bit of a challenge but a good challenge,” said their top-order batter Suné Luus.
South African head coach Hilton Moreeng said: “From the first ball, we need to make sure we’re ready for what is coming. The two teams have played a lot of cricket against each other and they know each other very well. There shouldn’t be a lot of surprises.”
The second and third T20Is are at Potchefstroom on 30 March and East London on 3 April before the three-match ODI series commences.
