NEWS
Follow UsSri Lanka women's head coach Rumesh Ratnayake accepted that the expectation of being one of the underdogs of the Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 got the better of the players in his side.
On October 12 (Saturday), following a heavy defeat to New Zealand, Sri Lanka bowed out of the 2024 WT20WC having not won a single game.
"We were in this group where we had some very strong teams and we wanted to win those games. But I think the expectations got to the team. Things went into the minds of the players. In the last 48 hours to 60 - 72 hours, we were trying to work out what went wrong,” he said after the team’s last World Cup game against New Zealand also ended in a loss.
Reasoning out what was different between this and the last World Cup, Ratnayeke said, "There were no expectations in the last World Cup. This is not an excuse by any chance. And we came up, we beat South Africa, we beat Bangladesh and we did a reasonably good job in that World Cup.”
Sri Lanka came into the World Cup after beating India in the final of the Women’s Asia Cup 2024 and having won a bilateral series against the West Indies, England, and South Africa, some of the top sides in the world.
However, in this World Cup, they could get past the 100-run mark only once with the bat. This eventually led to losses against Pakistan, Australia, India and in the last game against the White Ferns as well.
"Winning the Asia Cup 2024 was a fabulous thing for the team and the country. But, that expectation was from the country, from the people, and then as a team it built on us as well, rightly so. I mean, I like the fact that it built on us so that we had this sort of confidence to go out there and sort of outsmart any team. But come to the tournament, in hindsight what I can say is that we did not play to the expectations,” the coach explained the poor showing of the team.
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