IND-W vs SL-W: Smriti Mandhana’s grace reminds Sri Lankan coach Rumesh Ratnayake of David Gower
Rumesh Ratnayake’s team was at the receiving end of Smriti Mandhana’s bat in the fourth T20I on Sunday. But, that didn’t stop him from admiring her grace.
The Sri Lankan coach was, in fact, reminded of someone he used to bowl in Tests in his days. “Smriti looked a little bit like David Gower,” he said. “I was actually speaking about that to W.V. Raman. She has that same laidback style to her batting, a lazy elegance. It is always nice to watch a left-hander bat. And her scoring 10,000 runs in international cricket is a huge achievement.”
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Ratnayake is also glad that Sri Lanka was finally able to put up a good fight against India after being outplayed in the first three T20Is. “Someone can say we lost the toss in the first three matches, but we should have done much better than we did,” said the former pacer who played 23 Tests and 70 ODIs and took 149 wickets from those games. “We gave away a lot of easy runs, with loose balls, but I am not taking anything away from the skillsets of the Indian batters.”
One of those batters who smashed the Lankan bowlers around, Richa Ghosh, said she wanted to score quick runs after she was promoted up the order. “My motto is to score runs and provide a good finish to the team,” she said. “The wicket was good for batting.”
She said the World Cup victory had changed the lives of the Indian players. “Wee receive a warm welcome from the public,” she said. “Now people now know who Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh or Shafali Verma is… And that is a great thing.”
Published on Dec 29, 2025
