You may call it a brutal schedule, but that is what World Cups are all about and Sri Lanka’s women will need to produce something special in Southampton if they are to keep their campaign alive.
Opening the tournament against hosts and former champions England was always going to be a stern examination and there is no easing off the pedal for Chamari Atapattu’s side with defending champions New Zealand awaiting them on Tuesday.
The White Ferns themselves will be hurting after their shock defeat to West Indies earlier this week and another setback would leave them staring down the barrel. With the Caribbean side already off the mark, Tuesday’s clash has effectively become a must-win encounter for both teams.
Sri Lanka arrived in Birmingham with plenty of momentum behind them. Bilateral series victories, convincing performances in the warm-up games in Derby and a two-week residential camp in Kandy had all suggested that they were as well prepared as any side in the competition. But against a rampant England outfit, things unravelled quickly. There were precious few positives to take away from an 87-run defeat.
Apart from the opening over, little went according to plan for the Sri Lankans and they were never really in the contest. Fielding had been one of the areas the team had worked tirelessly on in recent months, but that too let them down.
“More than the fielding, I am disappointed with the way we bowled at them,” Head Coach Jamie Siddons told the media.
“We are certainly better than this and we have another opportunity to showcase that in Southampton. Our next game is crucial now,” Siddons added.
Another defeat against New Zealand could all but extinguish Sri Lanka’s hopes of reaching the semi-finals. Their Net Run Rate has already taken a battering and victory is imperative if they are to stay in the hunt.
Much has gone right for women’s cricket back home in recent years. More schools have embraced the game and Sri Lanka Cricket has invested heavily at grassroots level. There is regular competition not just for the national side but also for the second string teams and hopes are high among supporters that this generation can achieve something meaningful. Their performance in Birmingham, however, did little justice to those expectations.
There was a time when the side leaned almost entirely on the dependable shoulders of Chamari Atapattu. While the skipper continues to deliver on the biggest stages, she now has support. Several young players have started sharing the burden with bat and ball and some of them
possess that priceless commodity in international sport – the ‘X-factor’. This campaign could well offer a glimpse of what they are capable of.
For years, it was that very X-factor that kept Sri Lanka’s men competitive in ICC events, allowing them to punch above their weight for close to a decade. There is every reason to believe that the women can follow a similar path.
Conditions may be challenging and the odds may be stacked against them, but fans back home will be hoping that Sri Lanka finally produce the sort of performance they have long threatened to deliver on the global stage.
