Chamari Athapaththu puts retirement on hold, gears up for T20 World Cup qualifiers in late April

Chamari Athapaththu, on the brink of representing Sri Lanka Women in her 100th ODI in the upcoming three-match ODI series against South Africa Women, created a buzz on social media via a couple of cryptic posts. 

After failing to make an appreciable impact with the bat in the first two T20Is, Athapaththu eventually prevailed in the third game, scoring a match-winning 73 (46), leading her team to their first-ever T20I series victory against the Proteas. 

After clinching the series the previous Thursday, Athapaththu shared images of herself alongside the trophy with a caption stating "last duty for my country". She has since removed that particular phrase from her Facebook post. Three days later, another post ensued, with the caption "Review DRS", with a winking emoji, which was mysteriously ambiguous in itself. The caption also included "Some decisions are very difficult. But at some point in life, we have to make such decisions.", with her including a heart, the Sri Lankan flag, and a trophy.

Athapaththu shared in East London that she had still not made up her mind regarding retirement and that she was engrossed in preparing herself for the ODIs against South Africa and the T20 World Cup Qualifiers to follow later in the month.

"I'm still not decided [on retirement]. We can talk about it later. At the moment, I'm focused on the [South Africa] ODIs and World Cup qualifiers. Let's see in the future," the batting all-rounder stated. 

The 2024 ICC Women's T20 World Cup Qualifier is slated to commence on April 25 in Abu Dhabi, with Sri Lanka being grouped in Group A with Scotland, the USA, Thailand, and Uganda, with the basic requirement being topping the group and getting into the finals to go through to the T20 World Cup, which will be played in Bangladesh in September and October.

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The southpaw remarked that she was optimistic about the batters and the bowlers of her team, who had played a good brand of cricket thus far. However, she underscored that the conditions in UAE would be quite different than that in South Africa, with the conditions being quite conducive for batters. She also highlighted that each team playing the qualifiers has their priority on winning it, so her team and herself will have to be at the top of their game throughout the 13-day tournament. 

"I'm pretty confident about my group. We've played really good cricket so far. But the UAE has different conditions and is really good for the batters. Every team goes to qualifiers to win, so we have to play our best cricket in World Cup qualifiers as well. I'm pretty confident about my bowling unit and batting unit," said Athapaththu.

Athapaththu also spoke on the overhaul which domestic cricket in Sri Lanka has gone through in the recent past, with there being a lot of cricket played in Sri Lanka, the genesis of U-19, U-17, provincial, and club tournaments.  With these sorts of recent developments resulting in a lot of youngsters and schoolgirls playing the game as well as bettering the results for the nation as a whole.

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"We've restructured our domestic cricket and we are playing a lot of cricket in Sri Lanka. We started an Under-19 tournament, Under-17 tournaments, provincial tournaments, and club tournaments. So better results are coming now. There are a lot of youngsters playing cricket in Sri Lanka and schoolgirls starting playing cricket," shared Athapaththu.