SPECIAL: Discover the Grass Roots Structure of Sri Lanka Women’s Cricket

Snehal Pradhan

27 Sep 2018 00:00 IST

New Update

SPECIAL: Discover the Grass Roots Structure of Sri Lanka Women’s Cricket — Shashikala Siriwardene and Chamari Atapattu will take charge of the ODI and T20I teams respectively.. ©ICC

If you’ve followed India women’s tour of Sri Lanka, by now you’ve got a fairly good idea of what the Sri Lankan national team looks like. But have you ever wondered how they got there?

In this special feature, Women’s CricZone looks at the domestic structure of women’s cricket in Sri Lanka:

Sri Lanka are perhaps unique, in that their men’s First Class cricket structure has two parallel arms: club and provincial. It is similar for women, except that in men’s cricket, club cricket has shaped itself as the pinnacle, but for women’s cricket, the provincial tournaments hold greater importance than they do in the men’s game.

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A domestic team celebrating a win. ©SLC

Here are some key facts about the women’s domestic structure:

CLUB (Senior Level):

The club structure has two Divisions.

8 women’s teams play in Division One and 12 play in Division Two.

Both divisions play 50 over and 20 over competitions annually.

A promotion and relegation system links the Divisions.

The traditional clubs like Colts Cricket Club have teams in this structure. Teams from the Military also play here. Some clubs, like the Army and Air Force Sports Clubs, field multiple teams across divisions.

PROVINCIAL (Senior Level):

Players are shuffled across four provinces, Northern, North-Western, Western and Southern to ensure a balanced competition. The tournament is also called the Super 4’s. (The Eastern region comes under North-Western given the low density of population.)

Annual 50-over and 20-over competitions are held.

Due to the concentration and distribution of talent, the Provincial tournaments are the highest standard of cricket played by women in Sri Lanka.

You might have read that most Sri Lankan female cricketers are employed by the armed forces. Even some male players like Ajantha Mendis are army folk. How does that work?

ARMED FORCES (Senior Level):

The Air Force was the first of the armed forces to recruit female cricketers back in 2011. A majority of the players from the successful 2013 World Cup squad were employed by the Air Force. The Navy and the Army followed soon after.

Female players are usually picked on the basis of their sporting abilities and performances in domestic cricket. (In men’s cricket, there are a number of players who have been picked through regular recruitment but as their talent was discovered, they were moved away from regular duties towards sports.)

An inter-services tournament is held, at least every two years.

All three field teams in the Club tournaments, and have their own facilities where players can train.

As long as a player is a part of the national squad, they are allowed to devote practically all their time to cricket and don’t need to report for regular duty. Most of the Armed Forces teams also extend this facility to players in the Development and Emerging squads as well.

After their playing days, the Armed Forces usually offer courses for the players, completing which they are eligible to join the regular military workforce and keep their jobs. After 15 years of service, the players are eligible for a pension.

Fans at the women's domestic competition in Sri Lanka. ©SLC

What about junior cricket?

According to Apsari Singhabahu-Tillakaratne, who runs women’s domestic cricket, Sri Lanka didn’t have an age-group tournament structure until 2016. Since then, SLC have worked to put a pathway in place, to address the gap between school cricket organised by Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association, and the domestic tournament. Singhabahu-Tillakaratne listed the following steps that have been taken starting 2017:

Meeting school principals in districts to re-establish trust in women’s cricket, after the sport’s image had been tarnished in 2015. Now more than 40 schools are participating in the program.

SLC conducted talent hunts in each district, meaning summer coaching camps to identify local talent.

The best players from these camps were organised into district teams. Inter-district tournaments were held in each province, from which eight provincial squads were picked.

An Under-23 age group was created, in which the provincial teams compete. This tournament is played only in the 50-over formats.

A Development squad of 30 players was picked in 2017 from the Under-23 tournament. These players were given six-month contracts that allowed them to invest in equipment and cover transportation costs. The squad assemble for two-day training sessions twice a month under the SLC coaches.

In 2017, the Development team was taken to Thailand for friendly matches in order to give them exposure, after Thailand had visited Sri Lanka.

In 2018, the Development squad was cut down to 17, as eight players moved on the Emerging squad. One of those, Satya Sandipani, is on the fringes of the national team. The other, Kavisha Dilhari, has already made her international debut.

In order to popularise school cricket (which includes students till Standard 12), SLC have started Big Matches for girls, working along with the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association. (These are Inter-school cricket matches played annually between two schools which are extremely popular in men’s cricket. Some Big Match rivalries are more than 100 years old.)

In 2017, 10 Big Matches for girls were conducted. In 2018, 15 are planned. Popular schools are selected by SLC to play these matches and are given funds, equipment, umpires, scorers, and sometimes access to international grounds.

SLC aim to conduct one Big Match in every district. They plan to introduce an Under-19 Age group in the coming years. In future, SLC plans to involve stars from the Sri Lanka women’s team to inspire the younger participants.

A number of player in the current squad, like Eshani Lokusooriya and Nilakshi de Silva, only started cricket only in their late teens. SLC aims to introduce cricket to players of the age of 12-15 through this program. They aim to promote cricket outside the big cities, where parents are more open to their daughters playing cricket, owing to the possibility of securing jobs and SLC contracts in the future. Once the system takes root, expect a clutch of new faces to come into the Sri Lankan squad.

Sri Lanka Chamari Atapattu Shashikala Siriwardene Anushka Sanjeewani Nilakshi De Silva