Sri Lanka women’s cricket gains hope as nine young players protected by FOG rise through safe coaching pathways into Sri Lanka A.
Sri Lanka women’s cricket has discovered a promising new generation of young players, many of them rising quietly through safe hands and now ready to test themselves against the New Zealand second-string team touring the island.
Nine girls in the squad, known as Sri Lanka A, have been nurtured with almost parental dedication and virtually rescued from predators who, in the past, caused several talented young girls with cricketing dreams to disappear from the game after falling prey.
The guardians of these nine fortunate girls include coaches with clean track records attached to the humanitarian organisation Foundation of Goodness (FOG), headed by welfare crusader Kushil Gunasekera, a former Secretary of Sri Lanka Cricket many years ago.
One of the girls, Sumudu Nisansala, gave an early reminder of this emerging talent when she struck a half-century against the Kiwi women in the first match on Tuesday in Dambulla, before rain unfortunately brought the contest to a halt.
In reality, Nisansala and the other eight girls, all from the southern districts of Galle and Matara, have now signalled that it is time for Sri Lanka’s cricket followers to take notice. They are not passing names. They are here to stay.
Nisansala has four teammates from Devapathiraja College in Galle in the Sri Lanka A squad. They are captain Sathya Sadeepani, Sanjana Kavindi, Shashini Gimhani and Sachini Nisansala.
The other four, Rashmika Sewwandi, Tharuka Shehani, Lihini Apsara and Piyumi Wathsala, are from Matara, where Anura College is also gaining ground as enthusiasm for girls’ cricket continues to grow by the day. All of them have benefitted through the intervention of FOG.
Together, they have helped bury an era when Sri Lanka’s women cricketers were treated as the punchline of club and locker room humour.
Some critics once mocked them as too motherly to be involved in sport, while others claimed they were too delicate to compete against strong women and would be better suited to working as seamstresses in the apparel industry.
That history has now been placed where it belongs. Male chauvinism no longer gets under the skin of the island’s women cricketers.
Today, they have crossed old barriers of separation and are displaying skill, temperament and tactical understanding on the field no different from the men, leaving many to wonder why today’s girls are not like yesterday’s women who had so little support.
Devapathiraja College is now the leading school associated with women’s cricket, while the Foundation of Goodness and its cricket academy in Hikkaduwa have helped these young players grow through years of generous sponsorship and structured support.
“We are a feeder to the Sri Lanka team and we are sincerely and genuinely lifting up these girls with impartiality and good intentions doing justice for them and Sri Lanka,” said Gunasekera, who holds honorary membership in the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the custodian of cricket’s laws.
To the discerning, it may appear a miscarriage of justice that Gunasekera has not played any role in Sri Lanka Cricket affairs for more than 20 years.
If anyone understands what women’s cricket in the island needs, Gunasekera stands apart. Through FOG, he has helped establish a structure and management plan where everyone is connected to a system, and where the apparatus is held responsible and answerable.
Gunasekera and the FOG think-tanks are now drawing up plans to move deeper into the villages in search of girls in their early teens.
These young prospects could be brought under the care of a dedicated group of FOG Academy coaches, some of whom can already take pride in having discovered the four girls from Matara.
As with girls and young women in several Sri Lankan sports, women’s cricket has also suffered from the actions of shady coaches and predators with hidden agendas.
In the past, such exploitation pushed promising young girls out of the game, while their complaints and exposes often fell on deaf ears.
For the girls under the care of FOG and its cricket academy at Hikkaduwa in Galle, however, there is now a safer pathway.
They can look ahead with greater confidence, knowing that their transition towards the highest levels of the Sri Lanka team is being guided with protection, structure and purpose.
