Mahela Jayawardene
Mahela Jayawardene
Denagamage Praboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene, known as Mahela Jayawardene, is a former Sri Lankan cricketer and captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team. He is widely regarded as one of the greats of modern cricket due to his masterful technician oozing class of batting, regarded amongst the best batsman against spin, along with his long time team mate and friend, Kumar Sangakkara and a legend in the history of the game. Jayawardene's highest test score, 374 against South Africa...
ProfessionCricket Player
Date of Birth27 May 1977
CityColombo, Sri Lanka
We came here without some main players, but at the end, we finished the series easily. The young players showed a lot of character.
We lost wickets in the middle of our innings and lost the momentum from then on. After starting well, we needed to score at least 250 on this pitch.
We played bad cricket yesterday and that one hour was really disappointing.
We just needed to take it easy with Vaas as he comes back and we didn't want to do too much with him too early in the tour.
We know it is a period that we have to rebuild.
We shouldn't take anything away from him, he batted really well - to bat for eight hours and nearly 400 balls is a magnificent effort.
We are confident to win all matches here but we will not take Bangladesh lightly.
There are no fears out there. There is nothing we cannot handle. It is just how we prepare ourselves mentaly and physically..
There is so much uncertainty in cricket. One day you can get a hundred, the next day you can be dismissed for a zero. It makes you become practical about things. Teaches you to accept both success and failure. I think I have learnt a lot about life from cricket.
People are already worrying about the ball moving around and all that jazz.
I was feeling pretty good out there in the middle when I went in, but it was one of those things - sometimes you get a really good ball. If it gets you out you just have to forget about it and make sure you do the hard work out there next time you get in.
It is nice that we finished the game today. At the end we finished the series with a convincing victory against Bangladesh. We came here without some key players but I must say our young players showed a lot of characters in the series which will help Sri Lanka cricket in the future.
We should not play like Australia or India or England - we should play like Sri Lanka.
We never take Bangladesh lightly, they are more competitive now. We have to win the series.