Sri Lanka women face Aussie juggernaut

Inoka Ranaweera	Ash Gardner

Sri Lanka will be hard pressed to halt the Australia juggernaut in their round-robin match of the Women’s Cricket World Cup today at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.

Australia who are the defending champions pulled off a massive victory by 89 runs against another top contender New Zealand after piling up a mammoth 326 in 49.3 overs and bundled out the Kiwis for 237.

Sri Lanka in contrast were out-played by India in their opening match on Tuesday after conceding them a total of 271 in 47 overs and were dismissed for 211.

It is the Australian batting that Sri Lanka will be up against with Ash Gardner moving into today’s match with 115 under her belt made against New Zealand. She made the runs in just 83 balls in a sheer onslaught on the bowlers.

Sri Lanka’s batting continues to revolve around Chamari Atapattu who made a top score of 43 in the match while the rest of her team-mates could not make any impact against the Indian bowlers. 

Harshitha Samarawickrema stands out as the only other batter in the Sri Lanka camp that the team can depend on if it is her day.

Sri Lanka has just one bowler in Inoka Ranaweera to depend on after she took four wickets against India in the opening match although bowling to the stronger Australia batting line-up will be a different ball game altogether.