After triumphant 2023, will Sri Lanka women finally get their due?

Sri Lanka have had a history-making 12 months. It is difficult to overstate just how impressive they've been, compared to what had come before.

Between January 2015 and September 2022 (just before the beginning of last year's Women's Asia Cup), Sri Lanka had played 123 completed internationals and lost 100 of them. This is a win rate of 18.7%, and included in this are victories over sides such as Malaysia. Sri Lanka had also lost to Thailand during this period.

Since then, as if on a dime, their results have turned. Since October last year, they've completed 25 matches and won 15 - a win rate of 60%.

As with the 2-1 series win over England away from home this week, many of these have been hard-won games. In last year's Asia Cup, they beat Bangladesh and Pakistan to enter the final (which they lost to India).

Since then, there's been something of a dream run. Sri Lanka beat South Africa and Bangladesh in their opening games of the Women's T20 World Cup, but huge losses to Australia and New Zealand prevented them from being serious semi-final contenders. They'd been on the same number of points as South Africa, who made the semis, but were way behind on net run-rate.

A 2-1 T20I series victory against Bangladesh at home followed soon after, along with a win in the only completed ODI of that tour, to cap off their dominance.

In the last two months, Sri Lanka have made perhaps their greatest leaps ever. They'd never beaten New Zealand in a single match and were powered by two Chamari Athapaththu centuries - the second of which is a contender for one of the greatest ever (140 not out off 80 balls, while chasing 196 off 31 overs) - to win the ODIs 2-1. They lost the first two T20Is of that tour but claimed a consolation victory in the third game.

England were not at full strength against Sri Lanka in the recent T20Is, but there is such a vast chasm between the resources afforded to each team that Sri Lanka's triumph was extraordinary nevertheless. Just as one example, Sri Lanka Cricket crowed that they had increased international women's match fees to $750 this year. England players, meanwhile, get close to $3750 per T20I played - roughly five times more.

Beyond this, England players have access to much better training facilities, a broader selection of backroom staff, better opportunities to hone skills in high-profile leagues such as The Hundred, and of course central contracts that allow them to focus more intensively on their sport. According to the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations assessment in 2022 (before the match fees went up by threefold), "no female players in Sri Lanka would be considered full-time professionals".

Whether this run of outstanding results can be a new dawn for Sri Lanka remains to be seen. Athapaththu is clearly, by a distance, the most valuable player in this team. She is the only batter among the top five run scorers in both ODIs and T20Is this year, on top of which she frequently contributes with the ball. Although she continues, bizarrely, to be snubbed by the big-money leagues - the WPL and the WBBL - she is, on merit, a superstar of the game.

But where Athapaththu has always been spectacular, Sri Lanka's bowling attack has played just as important a role in turning things around. Inoka Ranaweera, whose left-arm-orthodox bowling has propped up the attack for years, has been especially outstanding since the start of 2022, taking 44 T20I wickets in 32 matches during that period. Left-arm seamer Udeshika Prabodhani has ten T20I wickets and an average of 15.9 this year. Offspinner Inoshi Priyadharshani's figures are almost as impressive in 2023.

Where before the last 12 months Sri Lanka's attack often leaked so many runs that even their talisman batter could not run the opposition down, lately the bowlers have not allowed their opponents to Athapaththu-proof their own totals. If there is a blueprint for now, it is this: take a couple of early wickets, have the spinners choke the middle overs, and then let Athapaththu loose on their bowlers.

Athapaththu, at 33, has perhaps a few years still left in her. In younger batters such as Kavisha Dilhari, Harshitha Samarawickrama and 18-year-old Vishmi Gunaratne, there is hope that while Sri Lanka may not find as spectacular a talent as Athapaththu, they may gradually develop into a productive batting order against top oppositions.

For now, this epic run is enough. This is a team whose board cared so little for that they did not play for almost two years during the Covid pandemic. (Imagine how tough this must have been on Athapaththu in particular, who lost nearly two of her prime batting years.)

There have been token increases in expenditure on women's cricket in Sri Lanka, but it remains desperately underfunded, with no serious domestic league, and no vision to expand the game among girls and younger women especially. In the past year, according to SLC's own releases, the board's annual revenue has increased to $45 million, and officials are promising to push that up towards $75 million.

Right now, there are few teams with a greater performance-to-investment ratio than Sri Lanka's women, who deserve far more than the board is currently giving them.