Preethika Ranaweera (35) heavily pregnant with her second child sat down in her small living room with family members to watch the finals of the T-20- Championship finals with high expectations that Sri Lanka will win after failing at three earlier consecutive finals. Preethika a former cricketer of the Lanka women’s team kept in good [...]

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Sri Lanka’s defeat was too much to bear for this one-time cricketer

By Aanya Wipulasena
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Preethika Ranaweera (35) heavily pregnant with her second child sat down in her small living room with family members to watch the finals of the T-20- Championship finals with high expectations that Sri Lanka will win after failing at three earlier consecutive finals.

Preethika a former cricketer of the Lanka women’s team kept in good form although she was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease at the age of seven.

Her mother Karunawathi Gothiyu said Preethika had been in good health and like many cricket fans here was eagerly anticipating the final encounter between Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

“She did not even like any of us telling her that our team would lose. That evening my youngest daughter told her that we won’t be able to win and Preethika asked her to go to bed without spoiling things,” she recalled sadly.

Mahesh Kodagoda, Preethika’s husband who had come home early to watch the match with them had however gone to bed early as he had to go early to work the next day. When the team lost Preethika was distraught. “She said that if Lasith Malinga played well we could have won the match easily,” said her mother.

A disappointed Preethika had gone to bed after the match and her father had seen her up around mid night. He had asked why she wasn’t asleep and she had said that she was sweating and wanted to get out of the room. Later around two in the morning she had woken up her husband saying she couldn’t breath.

“We had to go in search of a vehicle and Preethika walked along with us till we found one. She was a healthy woman. On several occasions she had got these kinds of attacks and she had got used to them,” said her husband.

“We took her to the Castle Maternity Hospital. The doctors and others tried their best to save her but we saw her losing consciousness in front of out own eyes,” Mahesh said.

He told the Sunday Times that the doctors had told them that they could have saved the lives of both his wife and unborn baby if they had brought her sooner. “My wife didn’t want to wake me up thinking it would be a burden on me and now I have lost her because my sleep was more important to her than her own life,” he said.

“My wife was addicted to cricket and pinned high hopes on this match. Ironically before the match she had called a friend and said if Sri Lanka lost the match she would die of a heart attack. Today she has left me,” he lamented.
This young family had many dreams with plans to move into a separate house after the confinement as they wanted to admit their 6 year-old daughter to a well-known school in the area, but a cricket match shattered all those dreams.




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