Athapaththu confident team will bounce back

Says spate of dropped catches let India off the hook

- BY SA’ADI THAWFEEQ

Inoka Ranaweera struck three times in one over deep into the heart of the Indian batting.

A famous quote in cricketing parlance is ‘catches win matches.’ But that was not to be the case for Sri Lanka in their opening ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup match against India at Guwahati on Tuesday.

Sri Lanka had India fighting with their backs to the wall at 124-6 after 27 overs, but a spate of dropped catches let the host off the hook and they recovered to post a challenging score of 269-8, to which Sri Lanka could match up with only 211 to lose under the DLS method by 59 runs.

World Cup debutant Amanjot Kaur was given three lives at 18, 37, and 50, and she made Sri Lanka pay for it dearly by scoring a half century (57 off 56 balls) and featuring in a match defining stand of 103 with Deepti Sharma, who also scored a fifty and took three wickets for 54 runs, including the prize wicket of Chamari Athapaththu for 43.

Athapaththu was left to rue her side’s three dropped catches of Amanjot, but she remained confident that her team will bounce back.

“We executed our plans but we dropped a couple of catches, especially [Amanjot] Kaur’s catch. We made three mistakes and it cost us,” said Athapaththu after the match.