Quadrangular good build-up for qualifiers: Siriwardena
Sri Lanka women's team captain Shashikala Siriwardena considers the opportunity of playing the Quadrangular series at home from 17 April-1 May as a perfect build-up to the ICC Women's World Cup Qualifiers in November this year.
Apart from hosts Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Ireland and Netherlands are the other teams in the fray.
The four sides play a series of One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals amongst each other in Colombo during the competition.
"I really admire the chance given to us to play in these kinds of tournaments. It is a very good build-up for us for the qualifiers in November. It gives us an opportunity to match our skills against good opposition," said Siriwardena.
Sri Lanka featured in last year's ICC Women's Cricket Challenge in South Africa. Siriwardena believes that the team learnt a lot from that tournament.
"In that tournament we did well against the other teams (Pakistan, Ireland, Netherlands), but did not do well against South Africa and West Indies. That was a big worry for us. We now know what we need to do against big sides. We plan to lessen our mistakes after learning from there," added Siriwardena.
In particular Siriwardena wants the batting line-up to learn from the tournament in South Africa.
"We need to build partnerships and learn to bat around one good player. These are the key learnings of the tournament in South Africa."
Sri Lanka also played England at home later in the season and the captain believes the squad is better for the experience.
"We showed that we can be competitive against them (England). That was a proof that we have improved. We were used to the pitches and played really well. In the ODIs, the rain stopped one of the game and in the other we lost by just five runs. We were satisfied with the whole series."
Siriwardena believes the improvement in the team's performance could be gauged from the scores.
"We managed to score 200 which was a huge improvement. We never did that before against England. We always got out for 150-170. But this time we scored 173 in 38 overs before rain stopped play. Then we scored 200 plus in the next game. Batting has improved a lot. The skill was there, only application is better now."
Siriwardena is not underestimating any of the rival teams in the quadrangular and is confident of coming on top.
"Although we are ranked higher, we are not underestimating any team. We will be playing as hard as possible. We want to be the champions as that will help us in the qualifiers in November. I think all the other teams are looking at this tournament similarly," concluded Siriwardena.