Sri Lanka Women cricketers head coach Hemantha Devapriya hopes for dry weather and helpful pitches that would suit his team laden with spin in the upcoming ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in England.
“At the moment its cold 17 degrees hopefully if the sun comes out it will be helpful. Those are things we can’t control. Our success will depend on getting a good score on the board and our key is spin. We select batters upto 6 and we have two spinners coming in Ama (Kanchana) and Shashikala (Siriwardene),” said Devapriya.
“You can swing the ball in the first 10 overs or so and once the swing goes our bowlers are not going to be that effective to get the batsmen out. We have two left-arm spinners as well and sometimes if the fast bowlers fail we may have to go with spin. We are going with a positive frame of mind to score runs and get wickets,” he said.
The return of experienced all-rounder and former captain Sashikala Siriwardene to the side from injury Devapriya said would certainly make a big impact on the team.
“Her return has strengthened the team a lot. She will make a big impact because she is an all-rounder and she has the experience also. Her experience will be very useful in the middle,” said Devapriya.
“Our aim is to try and finish in the top four we have a fair chance of doing that. When you compare us with other teams they are well ahead of us but you never know in a tournament of this nature.”
According to Devapriya Sri Lanka has prepared well for this tournament ironing out most of their faults and it is now upto the players to deliver in the middle.
“Since I took over six months ago I’ve found out that our run rate has not been that great and our batters’ strike rate was not so efficient. Other than (Eshani) Lokusuriyage and (Chamari) Atapattu who had strike rates of little over 60, others were below that some under 40 which indicated that if Atapattu and Lokusuriyage scored we managed over 200 runs,” observed Devapriya.
“What they were lacking was creative shots and use of the feet. They were averaging only 41 singles per match. We worked on it and they improved it to 100 singles. We increased their shot range also like using the pace of the ball. They were very negative on back of the length balls and not creating a shot off that delivery. We practiced with hard plastic balls on granite surfaces to overcome that lapse. We also played a lot of practice games with under 17 boys and in the last two games we managed to get over 200 runs,” he said.
Another area Devapriya said they worked hard at was the fitness. “Fitness was a big problem I had especially with ageing players. When you are not fit it affects the fielding. Gradually we increased their workload fitness coupled with fielding. At gym sessions we introduced new exercises to develop the technique to generate power when batting. Overall I had only six months and I never expected them to reach this standard, they developed very fast and their confidence has gone up.”
Sri Lanka will play three practice games against India, England and a county side before their first World Cup match against New Zealand on June 24.
SRI LANKA WOMEN SQUAD: Inoka Ranaweera (captain), Prasadani Weerakkody (vice-captain), Chamari Atapattu, Chamari Polgampola, Shashikala Siriwardene, Dilani Manodara, Chandima Gunaratne, Nipuni Hansika, Ama Kanchana, Eshani Lokusuriyage, Harshitha Madavi, Hasini Perera, Udeshika Prabodhani, Oshadi Ranasinghe, Sripali Weerakkody.
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