Sri Lanka up for challenge against England today

Sri Lanka Women Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake with players Hasini Perera and Nilakshi Silva  

“The girls are really up to it and wanting to do well” – Head Coach

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Having lost their opening game of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup to India and seen their second match against Australia washed out by rain, Sri Lanka who have been out of action in the tournament for 10 days come up against England at the R. Premadasa International Cricket Stadium today in a match that will test their skills and patience.

 ”We are aware of the challenges we will have with England. England is on par or second best to Australia in terms of matches won, World Cups won. We are not bothered about that at this stage, but we are aware of that,” said Sri Lanka Women Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake at the pre-match media conference. 

“Our main concern will be our preparation. Our preparation with our strengths and how we can match it with their weaknesses. We will watch their strengths, we will watch their weaknesses and how we can establish that or do it at the right moment to get it right. Those are our talks, our conversations. But saying that, in our batting, the girls are really up to it and wanting to do well. That’s a huge plus because they know it’s a big stage.”

“Sometimes we need to bring it down and say it’s just another match. But they are excited about this big stage. To capitalise on that and to maximise, they need to have runs on the scoreboard. They are aware of that. They are also aware that somebody, at least one or two, should bat till the end. Those are the conversations we’ve had about batting. Bowling also, we are well planned. With our coaches, we are scrutinising every batter of the English team and going through them. We analysed their top nine. But the time for observing is over, now we need to take ownership of the situation, and go out there and perform.”

“We believe England is a very experienced side, even though they don’t have left-handers they are quite well equipped, so we understand their strengths. We know what they’re strong at and we’ve seen them do it all so to speak. We believe that we are ready to sort of counter-attack that and do the best we can in the best way we could.”

Ratnayake emphasised that in batting what was most needed was patience and discipline. “That’s what we lacked maybe against India, not deliberate, but it needs more focus so that it could be established.”

On the contributions expected from the lower order batters Ratnayake said, “We actually spoke about this in detail, how those coming lower down the order – even below number seven – need to score more. Our main responsibility is that the top seven need to score the most runs. We’re addressing it differently, because even in the last game no one scored even 50 – not that 50 would have been enough. We’ve spoken about how you need to bat deep – at least one of the top six needs to hang around. It’s because none of those batters hung around that we were unable to chase down India’s score. I’ve seen that tail-enders have come and scored runs in this tournament, but if you look at it from a different angle that’s the way the game is headed now, so we need to also aim to do that and expect runs from numbers eight, nine and ten.”

Sri Lanka actually lost their opening game to India due to poor catching and Ratnayake was quite frank in his assessment of the fielding standards.

“We saw two sides to ourselves in that game. Our best fielding and our worst. We need to understand that there are 300 deliveries in an innings, so we need to keep up our standards right throughout. We’ve had discussions, we know that nobody drops catches intentionally, but it’s important to keep our concentration levels up.”

Sri Lanka women’s cricket has shown an upward trend since Ratnayake took over two and a half years ago and he put it down to “attitude”.

“The discipline in which they have brought in. But it’s not just me, I think it was set up in a way in which it was easy for me to take over and sort of walk that talk. I believe the girls were really into it too. They wanted to get to that next level and they were very keen on getting there. As a coach it was an absolute delight.”