Shashikala Siriwardene, who made her international debut in 2003, came to bat at a critical situation against West Indies in her first ICC World Cup. Sri Lanka has lost their previous two matches against Australia and England and was looking for their first victory.
On 28th March 2005, in their fourth group match against West Indies, Sri Lankan skipper Sandamali Dolawatte won the toss and elected to bat first. Sri Lanka lost their two openers within 8 overs. Then Suwini de Alwis and Hiruka Fernando added 69 runs in 129 balls to stable the innings. Both of them got out in space of 2 runs and Sri Lanka was crumbling again.
Shashikala came to the crease after the fall of the third wicket at 83. She has had the experience of 14 matches then and has scored 152 runs with a best of 29. Like her team, it was not a good venture for young Jayawardene till then who has managed to score 29, 0, 3 in her previous three matches. But in that match, she showed the immense patient to tackle the West Indian bowlers and accumulate the runs.
With the help of the lower middle order and tailenders, she faced the challenge and kept the scoreboard running. None of the batters after Sashikala reached the double-figure mark. She got the required support from Dedunu Silva who faced 22 balls while scoring mere 8 runs. But de Silva faced those numbers of balls, that gave Siriwardena to play freely and complete her deserving half-century.
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Siriwardene’s knock of 52 in 6o balls helped her team to cross the 150 runs mark. She added 61 runs in 16 overs for last 6 wickets, out of which the others contributed only 13 runs. Sashi, hit four boundaries out five, that Sri Lankan batters had hit that day. It was Shashikala Siriwardene’s first out of seven half-centuries, that she has made in 118 ODI matches for Srilanka. West Indies based on Nelly Williams unbeaten 70 went on to win the match by 8 wickets.
Apart from the fact that it was her first half-century for her country, Shashikala still holds the record of the youngest ever Sri Lankan women to hit an ODI half-century at the age of 20 years and 42 days due to her 52 in that match. She is closely followed by Nipuni Hansika (20 Y 288 D) and Chamari Athapaththu (21Y 78 Days).
However, there are two other players, Dedunu Gunaratne (57) and Chaturi Thalagalage (68*), who also have scored half-centuries against Pakistan and Netherlands, respectively. But due to the lack of knowledge about their Date of Births, Shashikala Siriwardene holds the record.
Notably, Shashikala, who has recently taken retirement from all forms of international cricket is the second-highest scorer for Sri Lanka in ODI with 2029 runs and 1097 T20I Runs. Besides that, she leads the list of wicket-taker for Sri Lanka in both ODI and T20I with 124 and 77 wickets respectively.
