Sri Lanka Women’s team captain Chamari Athapaththu has pledged to continue representing the country for “one or two more years” and hopes that more exposure at international level will help build on the promise of some of the young talent in her team. 

After winning their first two matches at the Women’s T20 World Cup 2023, Sri Lanka suffered two chastening defeats to Australia and New Zealand to see their campaign fizzle out to a first round exit. 

“I will try my best to play for my country, I want to build a good team for Sri Lanka for the future, so that's my goal. A lot of youngsters are coming in, so I want to encourage them, to be a role model and always try to lead them from the front. My target is playing another one or two years for Sri Lanka, that's what I want to do,” Athapaththu said after Sri Lanka’s 102-run defeat to New Zealand on Sunday. 

The weight of the occasion, with Sri Lanka facing two of the three top ranked teams in Women’s international T20 cricket with the possibility of making their first World Cup semi-final, was perhaps too heavy on the shoulders of her young charges, Athapaththu believes. 

“I feel some of the girls in my team, they take too much pressure on their shoulders, and I think they didn't handle that pressure very well, especially the bowling department. We dropped a couple of catches and the batting department, we struggled a lot in the first six overs, so that's where we lost this game,” she said. 

“I think execution is the most important thing in this game because we can plan a lot of things but we have to execute that plan in the middle. I have a lot of youngsters and they have not played a lot of cricket, so they take too much pressure on their shoulders.”

One way to help those young players handle pressure situations is experience, and a lack of exposure to international competition in the lead up to the World Cup meant Sri Lanka did not have the optimum preparation for the tournament. 

It’s something that Athapaththu hopes is addressed going forward, although the establishment of a women’s future tours programme, akin to the men’s game, means there is more international cricket on the horizon for the women’s team. 

“Definitely, the youngsters need some experience and experience not coming from playing in the nets. They need to play more cricket in future, that's what we want to do, so hopefully Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) try their best to organise some tours in future. We have to play a lot of cricket against top four teams, so then we can improve our cricket and we can build good teams,” she said adding that, if it was coupled with a reworked domestic structure, Sri Lanka could have a strong team within the next two years. 

“We have to develop our structure, essentially try and do our best to rebuild the structure and now I feel we have a lot of youngsters, hopefully next two years we can build good teams in Sri Lanka. We are playing good cricket at the under-19 level, so we have good junior players, so next year we can play good cricket,” Athapaththu opined.

(Shehan Daniel)