Chamari Athapaththu (Sri Lanka Women Captain): "Yeah, definitely. I try to control what I can control. As a team, the expectations are always high when we come to a World Cup. Unfortunately, we lost our first game against India and another against England. We made quite a few mistakes in the field, with the bat, and as a bowling unit. So, the results haven’t gone our way, unfortunately. But we’re focusing on what we can do better in the future.
Yeah, we have some really talented young players, along with experienced senior players. The seniors always take the time to guide the youngsters, and as captain, I try to support all the girls. I always encourage them to play positive cricket—that’s my main focus. We also have a strong domestic structure and are playing a lot of cricket here in Sri Lanka, so hopefully, we can continue building a solid team for the future.
We’ve played against South Africa, India, and New Zealand. Over the last 12 months, we’ve beaten some of these teams, and we even beat England in England in the T20 format, though that’s a different format. On any given day, the team that plays their best cricket will win. We need to improve our batting, especially in the longer format, where it’s important to stay at the crease, play our natural game, and, most importantly, be patient. I feel we’re very close to being among the top four teams, but we need to improve our cricket. If we make too many mistakes in one game, we can’t win. In this World Cup, the mistakes we made against India and England cost us those games, and that’s why we’re in our current position.
Yeah, I’ve played a couple of World Cups now, and at 35, I’m really looking forward to continuing to play and helping build a strong team for the future. These are definitely tough conditions, playing under lights and dealing with the rain, which makes things even harder. But we’ll keep working and see what we can achieve going forward."