Rumesh Ratnayake bowled Sri Lanka to its first ever Check victory. That was in 1985, however even 4 many years later, he remembers exactly how he bought the higher of a world-class Indian batting lineup that boasted of Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohinder Amarnath in 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 Check. The Lankans went on to win the three-match collection 1-0.
“For that collection, we had wickets that have been conducive to tempo,” stated Ratnayake. “That was our technique, however we most likely 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, during which Okay. Srikkanth, debutant Lalchand Rajput and Ravi Shastri have been the openers. “India had an excellent batting lineup these days, with Gavaskar, Amarnath and Vengsarkar, who had such a lazy class to his batting,” stated Ratnayake throughout Sri Lanka’s girls’s T20I collection towards India. The ultimate match within the collection right here was his final because the coach.
Three years in the past, he had taken over when the crew was going by a tough patch. Beneath him, the crew beat South Africa in T20I collection in South Africa and England in England and shocked India within the Asia Cup closing.
“I used to be completely new to girls’s cricket and I accepted the job solely after the then coach Hashan Tillakaratne, my pal, joined the Bangladesh crew,” stated the person who took 149 wickets from 23 Checks and 70 ODIs. “I noticed potential within the crew 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, towards South Africa on the 2023 T20I World Cup, we received.”
He believes girls’s cricket is evolving quick. “A number of the sixes you see in girls’s cricket immediately are virtually as huge as those that have been scored by the lads 30 years in the past,” he stated.
Revealed on Jan 02, 2026