Women’s cricket is evolving fast, reckons Rumesh Ratnayake

He bowled Sri Lanka to its first ever Take a look at victory. That was in 1985, however 4 many years later, Rumesh Ratnayake nonetheless remembers how he received the higher of a world-class Indian batting line-up that boasted the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohinder Amarnath at Colombo.

The short, who used to put on a white headband, took 4 for 76 and 5 for 49 to guide Sri Lanka to a historic 149-run win within the second Take a look at at Colombo. The islanders went on to win the three-match collection 1-0.

“For that collection, we had wickets that have been conducive to tempo,” mentioned Ratnayake in an unique interview with The Hindu. “That was our technique, however we in all probability wouldn’t have made pitches like that if we have been taking part in Pakistan, although.”

Gavaskar had chosen to bat within the middle-order in that collection, wherein Okay. Srikkanth, debutant Lalchand Rajput and Ravi Shastri have been the openers. “India had a terrific batting line-up these days, with Gavaskar, Amarnath and Vengsarkar, who had such a lazy magnificence to his batting,” mentioned Ratnayake throughout Sri Lanka’s girls’s T20I collection in opposition to India. By the way, the ultimate match within the collection right here was his final because the coach.

He had taken over when the staff was going by way of a tough patch, some three years in the past. Below him, the Lankan girls beat South Africa in T20I collection in South Africa and England and shocked India within the Asia Cup last.

“I used to be completely new to girls’s cricket and I accepted the job solely after the then coach Hashan Tillakaratne, my good friend, joined the Bangladesh staff,” mentioned the person who took 149 wickets from 23 Assessments and 70 ODIs. “I noticed potential within the staff and I gave them confidence. I wasn’t harsh on them after they made errors, like dropping a catch. Within the very first match we performed, in opposition to South Africa on the 2023 T20I World Cup, we gained.”

He believes girls’s cricket is evolving quick. “Among the sixes you see in girls’s cricket at this time are nearly as large as those that have been scored by the boys 30 years in the past,” he mentioned.