“I am nonetheless not determined [on retirement],” she stated in East London, the place Sri Lanka will play South Africa within the first of three ODIs tomorrow. “We will speak about it later. In the intervening time, I am centered on the [South Africa] ODIs and World Cup qualifiers. Let’s examine sooner or later.”
Athapaththu, who’s 34 and is because of play her one hundredth ODI for Sri Lanka within the upcoming collection, raised issues over her enjoying future with a few cryptic Fb posts during the last week. On Thursday, after Sri Lanka secured a historic, first T20I collection win over South Africa, Athapaththu put up footage of herself and the trophy and included the phrases “final responsibility for my nation” within the caption. She has since eliminated that phrase from the submit.
On Sunday, she posted one other image and wrote: “Assessment DRS,” with a winking emoji. “Some choices are very tough. However in some unspecified time in the future in life now we have to make such choices.” She included a coronary heart, the Sri Lankan flag and a trophy.
Athapaththu has since confirmed that she will stay in command of Sri Lanka at the least till the completion of their T20 World Cup Qualifier marketing campaign, which begins on April 25 in Abu Dhabi. Sri Lanka are grouped with Thailand, Scotland, Uganda and the USA and should high the group to qualify for the World Cup in Bangladesh later this yr.
Athapaththu stated she is “undoubtedly” out there for the qualifier and is looking forward to Sri Lanka’s possibilities of securing a spot on the principal occasion. “I am fairly assured about my group. We have performed actually good cricket thus far. However the UAE has completely different situations and is actually good for the batters. Each crew goes to qualifiers to win so now we have to play our greatest cricket in World Cup qualifiers as nicely. I am fairly assured about my bowling unit and batting unit.”
Whether or not or not Athapaththu will characteristic in these matches stays to be seen however no matter she decides, she is content material that Sri Lankan cricket is in good arms. “I am actually proud of our kids and the way they deal with the strain within the center, particularly Vishmi [Gunaratne], Kavisha [Dilhari] and Harshita [Samarawickrama]. They’re enjoying actually, actually good cricket during the last couple of months,” she stated. “And I believe now we have good depth.
“We have labored laborious as a rustic and as gamers. We have restructured our home cricket and we’re enjoying plenty of cricket in Sri Lanka. We began an Beneath-19 match, Beneath-17 tournaments, provincial tournaments, and membership tournaments. So higher outcomes are coming now. There are plenty of children enjoying cricket in Sri Lanka and schoolgirls beginning enjoying cricket.
“These are the optimistic issues on my facet, and I hope we generally is a good crew in future.”
