Women's Cricket in Sri Lanka

Women's Cricket in Sri Lanka started in 1978 when four leading Colombo clubs - Colts Cricket Club, Burgher Recreation Club, Nondescripts Cricket Club and Nomds Cricket Club - met in the first ever tournament for the Rajasingham Trophy, which was won by NCC led by Champa Wettasinghe, who beat Colts, the favourites, the final.

Unfortunately, after that tournament in 1978, women's cricket failed to establish 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 tournament called the Pepsi Trophy between Colts, Nomads, Colombo Ladies and Shakthi Sports Club from Anuradhapura, who incidentally became the first outstation team to play leather ball Cricket. The tournament was won by Colombo Ladies - led by Vajira Premaratne, who was also a National Champion in both tennis and table Tennis - who defeated Colts in the final.

After this tournament the women's game started to become popular and the first ever association to run women's cricket was formed in January 1997 at the premises of Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL).

Gwen Heart became the first President of the Women's Cricket Association of Sri Lanka (WCASL) and with other teams joining, the WCASL organised an inaugural 50 over Cricket tournament, which was won by Colts Cricket Club.

The first task of the Association was to give as many opportunities as possible to the girls and in this regard they were lucky that Japan pulled out of the 1997 World Cup in India and that Sri Lanka was offered their place.

The first International game played by the Sri Lanka's women was against the Netherlands at the SSC grounds on the 28th of November 1997, which Sri Lanka lost but made amends by winning one match in the three match series. The first 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 first match was against the West Indies. They started with a convincing victory over them and with a no result possible in their game against India they qualified for the quarterfinal and a tough encounter against England. They lost, but had guaranteed themselves a place in the 2000 CricInfo Women's World 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 World Cup in New Zealand the side, captained by Rasanjali Silva, narrowly failed to qualify for the semi-finals when they lost to South Africa by just 16 runs.

The next assignment will be the tour of West Indies to Sri Lanka in December 2001. A pool of players will be picked from the annual tournament, which is currently being played at the Colombo Colts Cricket Club.