Sri Lanka women will meet India women in their Asia Cup T-20 final as the former goes in as defending champions with seven titles out of eight editions.
Sri Lanka has been runners-up five times and both sides enter the final with an unbeaten record.
Skipper Chamari Atapattu the in-form batter who scored a first ever Asia Cup century has won three player-of-the-match titles including a thrilling semi final against Pakistan on Friday.
However wicket keeper batter Anushka Sanjeewani the 34 year old player and a product of Sri Sumangala College Hikkaduwa played a good fighting innings to finish the game with one ball to spare on Friday.
She made an unbeaten 22 in 24 balls that had one six and one four in a 42-run stand for the fifth wicket with Atapattu.
“We wanted to be positive in our approach and after Chamari was back in the pavilion I was determined to fight on and stay at the crease and that paid off. I had a chat with Sugandika Kumari at the crease and she hit two well timed boundaries and we were lucky to pull it off”, said Sanjeewani.
She was all praise for coach Rumesh Ratnayake who can take much credit for turning things around in women’s cricket with his cool and calm handling of situations.
“Coach Rumesh Ratnayake never put us under pressure. He advises us to trust in ourselves and we have come to realise how valuable his role is to the team”, said Sanjeewani.
Atapattu said today’s final against India is a big challenge and playing at home meant very little.
“We made some mistakes in the semi final which we have to correct moving into the final. But overall we are in a good frame of mind to take on India”, said Atapattu.
India led by Harmanpreet Kaur defeated Bangladesh with an easy ten wicket win in their one sided semi final and the final could turn out into a contest between Sri Lanka’s bowlers and India’s batters.
