Sri Lanka's Vishmi Gunaratne scored her maiden ODI ton on Friday (August 16), breaking a monopoly previously held by Chamari Athapaththu.
The Lankans took on Ireland in Belfast in the first ODI of the sides' bilateral series. The T20I series had been drawn at 1-1 after Sri Lanka won the first game, and the hosts hit back in the second.
Ireland captain Gaby Lewis won the toss and chose to field first. The decision appeared to pay off in spectacular fashion, as Orla Prendergast removed Chamari Athapaththu for a golden duck in the very first over. Harshitha Samarawickrama, the hero of the first T20I, was dismissed soon after to leave the visitors at 35-2 in eight overs.
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Thereafter, Vishmi Gunaratne and Hasini Perera joined hands in the middle. Gunaratne had made her way to a sedate but solid 29 off 42 balls by the end of the 15th over, before starting to open up a bit more. She reached her half-century off 59 deliveries and then began to find boundaries with regularity.
Gunaratne moved from 87 to 91 with a boundary off Jane Maguire. Ordinarily, this would not be particularly significant, but it made her the first Sri Lankan woman after Athapaththu to go past 90 runs in a single white-ball international innings.
Three overs later, Gunaratne went one step further. She struck Arlene Kelly over mid-off for a boundary to bring up her hundred, making her only the third woman to do so while representing Sri Lanka, across formats. She was dismissed off the very next ball.
Vishmi Gunaratne blasts her way into the record books with her maiden ODI century! The second Sri Lankan woman to achieve this feat.
— Sri Lanka Cricket 🇱🇰 (@OfficialSLC) August 16, 2024
What a moment!
Video Credit: @CricketIreland #SriLankaCricket #vishmigunarathne #SLvIRE pic.twitter.com/NhpWRbID2s
Vishmi Gunaratne breaks Chamari Athapaththu's white-ball monopoly
Gunaratne's knock made her only the second Sri Lankan woman to score an international white-ball century. There have been 12 centuries (nine in ODIs, three in T20Is) before hers – all scored by Athapaththu. Sri Lanka's only Test centurion is Chamani Seneviratna, against Pakistan in 1998.
As Sri Lanka's only centurion in ODIs, it stands to reason that Athapaththu is the holder of a string of Sri Lanka's highest individual scores in the format. Indeed, before today, she held all of the top twelve ODI scores by a Sri Lankan, and all of the top fifteen in white-ball international cricket. With Gunaratne's century, those numbers have been cut down to nine and twelve respectively.
By the end of their innings, Sri Lanka managed to post 260-8, with Perera's 46 the second-highest score in the innings. Predergast was the standout for the Irish, taking 3-25.
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