da roleta： Women’s Cricket in Sri Lanka started in 1978 when four leading Colomboclubs – Colts Cricket Club, Burgher Recreation Club, Nondescripts CricketClub and Nomds Cricket Club – met in the first ever tournament for theRajasingham Trophy, which was won
S. de S. Wijeyeratne10-Aug-2001Women’s Cricket in Sri Lanka started in 1978 when four leading Colomboclubs – Colts Cricket Club, Burgher Recreation Club, Nondescripts CricketClub and Nomds Cricket Club – met in the first ever tournament for theRajasingham Trophy, which was won by NCC led by Champa Wettasinghe, who beatColts, the favourites, the final.Unfortunately, after that tournament in 1978, women’s cricket failed toestablish itself and only Colts and Nomads continued to play. In fact,eighteen years passed before the next tournament.Finally, in 1996, Colombo Colts Cricket Club organised a 30-over tournamentcalled the Pepsi Trophy between Colts, Nomads, Colombo Ladies and ShakthiSports Club from Anuradhapura, who incidentally became the first outstationteam to play leather ball Cricket. The tournament was won by ColomboLadies – led by Vajira Premaratne, who was also a National Champion in bothtennis and table Tennis – who defeated Colts in the final.After this tournament the women’s game started to become popular and thefirst ever association to run women’s cricket was formed in January 1997 atthe premises of Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL).Gwen Heart became the first President of the Women’s Cricket Association ofSri Lanka (WCASL) and with other teams joining, the WCASL organised aninaugural 50 over Cricket tournament, which was won by Colts Cricket Club.The first task of the Association was to give as many opportunities aspossible to the girls and in this regard they were lucky that Japan pulledout of the 1997 World Cup in India and that Sri Lanka was offered theirplace.The first International game played by the Sri Lanka’s women was against theNetherlands at the SSC grounds on the 28th of November 1997, which Sri Lankalost but made amends by winning one match in the three match series. Thefirst Captain of the Sri Lanka women’s team was Vanessa Bowen.Sri Lanka’s next assignment was the 1997 World Cup in India and the firstmatch was against the West Indies. They started with a convincing victoryover them and with a no result possible in their game against India theyqualified for the quarterfinal and a tough encounter against England. Theylost, but had guaranteed themselves a place in the 2000 CricInfo Women’sWorld Cup and left with their heads held high.Since then they have had further success. They defeated teams from Pakistan,West Indies, Netherlands and Ireland and in the 2000 CricInfo Women’s WorldCup in New Zealand the side, captained by Rasanjali Silva, narrowly failedto qualify for the semi-finals when they lost to South Africa by just 16runs.The next assignment will be the tour of West Indies to Sri Lanka in December2001. A pool of players will be picked from the annual tournament, which iscurrently being played at the Colombo Colts Cricket Club.