'Smart thinking has to come' to execute better - SL women's coach

Sri Lanka Cricket's newly appointed women's team head coach Hemantha Devapriya is confident that the team will improve despite suffering their second successive series whitewash in the recently-concluded series against England.

"England are one of the leading sides in the top bracket in women's cricket. Although we lost to a strong side, the girls gave 100% and I can see some improvement," he said. "The series was a good benchmark for me to gauge what standard we have to reach. We need to give them confidence, they need to learn to handle pressure situations.

"We have to improve in all three areas: batting, bowling and fielding and areas like game awareness, thinking ahead of the game, planning can be done but implementing it under pressure has to improve, handling situations and fitness levels. We have to increase all three areas at least by 10% so by a year's time it will double. We have to be patient, smart thinking has to come they are not very smart thinkers. There are so many areas we have to improve."

Among the areas Devapriya stressed upon was the improved batting. Sri Lanka made totals of 168, 173 and 161 in the first three ODIs against England, unlike in the series against Australia where they passed 150 only once in four matches.

"This is the first time they have reached totals of 150 plus consistently in a series and in the last match I made a point to give others a chance after talking to the selectors to see how good they are," he said. "We have very far to go but one positive thing is the girls are willing and the passion is there. They are eager to learn. I am quite sure in six months they will be on another different level. The results will come gradually."

Devapriya had little time to work with the team, considering he was appointed just a few weeks prior to the series. He felt the Asia Cup in Thailand later this month would give him a better idea of where the team stood at Asian level. Among the areas he believes there's bigger scope to improve is in their batting approach.

"I gave them a singles target, not fours and sixes," he said. "The plan was to at least to run 75 to 100 singles, but they couldn't reach that mark. They were always somewhere around 50 singles and we have to avoid a lot of dot balls. In two matches we had more than 200 dot balls, they are very hesitant to leave the crease and come out.

"I am really working hard on their shots range as well, using their feet to spin and getting onto the back foot for pace. They are committed front foot players and I am developing their back swing. Their bat pick-ups are very poor and generating batting power is the core area.

"They do a lot of hard work in the gym for their stomach and body but they must learn the art of delivering the power. How much of work you do in the gym the art of delivering the power is something which they don't use."

Well-rounded changes to batting technique apart, Devapriya felt translating gym fitness into being an agile fielding unit was equally important. "We have to sharpen the fielding also," he said. "I am trying to do their physical fitness coupled with fielding.

"The diving, sliding techniques are poor, sad to say that some girls have been playing for years but they don't know how to slide. The practice systems I have made a lot of changes where everybody gets a batting turn so that when they finish a day's practice they will have undergone about 250 different shots."