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Mahela Jayawardene
A
Profile on Mahela Jayawardene by
B.V.Swagath
 Mahela Jayawardene is a batman full of talent, a complete batsman
with all the shots in the book, a sweet timer of the ball, a cool
head in a tense situation…so many good qualities in this 27 year old
yet he lacks one of the most important qualities - CONSISTENCY. A
batting average of just above 30 in One Day Internationals doesn’t
truly speak about his potential as a class batsman. But no one can
deny about Jayawardene’s talent, which is no less to any best player
in the world on his day, including that of Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky
Ponting, Inzamam Ul Haq, Brian Lara, Sanath Jayasuriya or anyone.
Mahela Jayawardene has always been compared as the next Aravinda De
Silva of Sri Lanka and so far he has lived to that expectations,
although much much more is desired of this young man.
This exciting young batsman made his Test Debut in the
record breaking Test in 1997 against India at R.P.S., Colombo.
Mahela Jayawardene added insult to injury to the Indian bowlers in
that run riot innings with a classy 66, which was very much a part
of Lanka’s 952/6. Jayawardene had a dream start to his Test Career
with scores like the 167 against New Zealand and the brilliant 242
against India. His One Day debut was against Zimbabwe, again at
Premadasa in January 1998. His very second game, Mahela scored a 74
against Zimbabwe and in his 11th ODI, scored a scintillating 120
against England in the Carlton and United World Series game at
Adelaide. This was the match where the world witnessed the real
talent and temperament of Mahela Jayawardene. It was a match full of
bitter memories with Umpire Roy Emerson noballing Murali for
chucking. Sri Lankans walked out of the match and when play resumed,
England went onto set a difficult target of 302. Struggling at
134/4, Sri Lanka managed to win this exciting game thanks to the
heroics of the then 21 year old, Mahela Jayawardene. That was just a
glimpse of Mahela’s talent as a match winner.
Mahela Jayawardene, now after serving Sri Lankan Cricket
for almost 8 years, has scored more than 4000 runs in both formats
of the game. He has a good test average of over 47 and a moderate
average of 30 in ODIs. He now has 12 hundreds, 2 of which are double
hundreds (at the time of writing this article) and 20 fifties in
Tests and 6 hundreds and 21 fifties in ODIs. A lot more than these
figures is expected from a highly talented batsman like Mahela
Jayawardene. Mahela Jayawardene also has to score more runs in
overseas Tests and ODIs, not that he cannot score in overseas
conditions, but the fact is that he hasn’t! With the responsibility
of being the Vice Captain of the Sri Lankan team, the responsibility
may also be transferred into his batting and hopefully we would see
a much-matured batsman. Mahela Jayawardene may be the next Skipper
as well, with the present Skipper Marvan Atapattu already into his
30s.
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