Win over England was a team effort: Siriwardene
A visibly distraught England captain Charlotte Edwards conceded it was not the ideal way to defend their title which they won in Australia in 2009."We are bitterly disappointed, it is not the perfect start to the World Cup, I think lot of credit has to Sri Lanka and how they have played," she said.
Hailing her team's collective effort for their historic one-wicket win over defending champions England, an elated Sri Lanka skipper Shashikala Siriwardene on Friday said the win over the title favourites side would give them a major confidence boost in the upcoming matches of the ICC Women's World Cup.
"This is the highest successful run chase for us and this is not easy against a side like England. The main reason is the team effort because out of the 11 there are 7-8 performers, which was lacking for us as a team. And hopefully it will continue," said Shashikala after her team chased down England's competitive score of 238 with a last ball six.
It was Sri Lankan women's first-ever victory over England in any format of the game as they scored their highest total against the three-time winners in the ODIs.
"When we played against them in 2010 we lost by five runs, so against them we always had the faith that the bowling and fielding would live up to expectations," said the Lankan skipper, adding her team wanted to restrict England to under 200, which did not happen.
A visibly distraught England captain Charlotte Edwards conceded it was not the ideal way to defend their title which they won in Australia in 2009.
"We are bitterly disappointed, it is not the perfect start to the World Cup, I think lot of credit has to Sri Lanka and how they have played. We had a decent score and we let it slip in the end with a couple of drop catches. It is not all bad cricket from us but the credit has to go to Sri Lanka," she said.
Edwards rued the dropped catch of Kaushalya, when she was on nine, by Jennifer Gunn in the deep, who later went on to play a match-winning knock.
"We controlled the game till the last over when they needed a run. I obviously thought that we could defend the score till we keep picking on wickets. If we had held the catch down there [at long on], we could have won the match by 30. We paid for that," she said.
"Sri Lanka have been playing pretty good cricket and when we went over there two years ago they played some good cricket. It is not surprising to me today because they have got some talented players. And unfortunately they have all come good on the same day," she said while praising Lanka's shock-win.
"For the outsider looking in, it is a huge upset and we just got to come back strong here on Sunday (against India) and hopefully go on and beat West Indies." she added.