Atapattu backs India to reach finals; hopeful of Prabodhani playing for two years

Sri Lanka captain Chamari Atapattu has backed India to reach the finals of the T20 World Cup 2020 after their seven-wicket loss on Saturday (Feb 29).

“I want to see India in finals because I'm Asian so I'd love for India to play in the finals,” said Atapattu. “They're leading our group, and hopefully they'll play good cricket last couple of weeks so maybe they can go to the finals, and yeah, Australia, New Zealand are the best teams in our group, so it depends on the next game who's going for the semifinals.”

The southpaw has been Sri Lanka’s leading run-scorer in the competition – and fifth overall with 124 runs- admitted that the side is reliant on her, because of her experience and the others’ lack of it.

“We don't have experienced batters. I'm only (the) experience(d one) playing on (in) my team as a batter,” she said. “So I have to stay there and play my positive cricket. Actually, the whole batting unit depends on me, so we try to improve that area the next couple of months.”

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She said that in the next few months, she and the Sri Lankan team management will be working on fine-tuning the players’ skills and combinations with an aim to win the World Cup qualifiers and head to the 50-over event in 2021. And they needn’t look much beyond the youngsters like Kavisha Dilhari, Harshitha Madavi and the like.

“We have a lot of young good players, especially Kavisha, you can see she's playing really good today, and Umesha Thimashini, one of the good cricketers in Sri Lanka, very young girl. Hopefully she will be playing next couple of years, will be a good cricketer.”

Two of the veterans in the side are in the last leg of their careers, with Shashikala Siriwardene announcing that this competition is her last. It was speculated that Udeshika Prabodhani will also follow suit but Atapattu squashed those talks, saying, “Actually Shashikala will retire after this tour but not Udeshika. She will be playing next one, two years. I want her, so I hope she will be playing.”

They have a game against Bangladesh on Monday (March 2) to give Siriwardene a winning farewell.