COLOM­BO, Sri Lan­ka – Two of the world’s top women’s all-rounders will come face-to-face when Sri Lan­ka Women host West In­dies Women for a six-match, white ball se­ries next month.

West In­dies Women’s cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews, the cur­rent No. 1, will con­front her op­po­site Chamari Atha­p­aththu, the cur­rent No. 5, when the two sides meet in three One-day and three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween June 15 and 28.

Sri Lan­ka Crick­et, the or­gan­is­ing body for the sport in the is­land, an­nounced the sched­ule on Thurs­day, in­di­cat­ing that all three T20Is on June 15, 18, and 21 will be played in Galle, and all three ODIs on June 24, 26, and 28 will be played in Ham­ban­to­ta.

Both white-ball se­ries will be cru­cial to the two sides be­cause the ODIs will form part of the ICC Women’s Cham­pi­onship, which re­sults in di­rect qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the ICC Women’s ODI World Cup next year in In­dia, and the T20Is will be prepa­ra­tion for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup this Sep­tem­ber-Oc­to­ber in Bangladesh.

West In­dies Women re­turned home ear­li­er this month from a Tour of Pak­istan, where they won all but one of eight match­es, sweep­ing the hosts in three ICC Women’s Cham­pi­onship ODIs, and pre­vail­ing 4-1 in a sub­se­quent se­ries of five T20Is.

The ODI re­sult meant that the Caribbean side earned six points in the 10-team Women’s Cham­pi­onship ta­ble to­wards di­rect qual­i­fi­ca­tion for next year’s ICC Women’s Crick­et World Cup to be staged in In­dia.

Her side have won six of their 15 match­es (two were no-re­sults) and have 14 points, and they are sev­enth in the stand­ings with plen­ty of work to do to try to be­come one of the five team that di­rect­ly qual­i­fy for the World Cup along with the hosts.

Matthews, the ICC Women’s T20I Play­er-of-the-Year for 2023, un­der­lined her sta­tus as one of the lead­ing all-rounders in the world dur­ing the Tour of Pak­istan and earned the ICC Play­er-of-the-Month award for April.

Atha­p­aththu was al­so in con­tention for the award af­ter a suc­cess­ful Tour of South Africa, where her side drew 1-1 in a three-match Women’s Cham­pi­onship ODI se­ries (the oth­er match was aban­doned due to rain) and beat the hosts 2-1 in a three-match T20I se­ries, and she was the lead­ing per­former.

The ODI re­sult meant that the Sri Lankans earned three points to­wards the Women’s Cham­pi­onship ta­ble, and they have now won five of their 18 match­es (four have been no-re­sults), al­so have 14 points, and they are eighth in the stand­ings.

The last time West In­dies Women and Sri Lan­ka Women met in a bi­lat­er­al se­ries was back sev­en years ago when the Caribbean side swept their op­po­nents across both T20Is and ODIs in a home se­ries.

West In­dies Women have dom­i­nat­ed match­es against Sri Lan­ka Women in T20Is with a head-to-head record of 18-4, but it has been much clos­er with in the ODIs with the Caribbean side win­ning 18 and Sri Lan­ka 14.

(CMC)