Mahela Jayawardene
will seriously re-assess his future as Sri Lanka's captain and as an
international cricketer at the end of the tour of Australia.
"I am going to take it one series at a time especially after the
Australian tour I will have time to think," he said. "I took on the
responsibility to lead the team for one year and that will end after the
Australian tour."
He was speaking before Sri Lanka left for Australia on a tour which
includes a series of three Tests, five one-day internationals and
twoTwenty20 internationals.
"(After the tour) I can sit back and think what I want to achieve not
just for myself but for the team as well. I have always said that I am
not a guy who will just hang around for the sake of playing. If the
youngsters take on the responsibility and do the job for Sri Lanka then I
will be very happy to step aside and give them that opportunity but at
the same time I don't want the team in a situation where it will have a
harmful effect.
"I want to make that transition as smooth as possible. I don't want to
let go all the good things that's been done all these years and just
walk away from that. I will sit down and talk to a few people that I
talk to usually when it comes to taking a decision and have a chat with
the selectors as well especially with the captaincy position, then it
will be much easier for me to make a call on what I want to do in my
career."
Jayawardene is of the view that it would be the right time to hand over
the captaincy to his deputy Angelo Mathews who has been groomed for the
position over the past year or so. "Angelo hasn't had the experience of
leading the team at international level I agree but the way he led the
provincial and SLPL teams to reach the final was most commendable.
"As a deputy he has contributed on the field and off the field and that
is something that the public and others don't see. He is very mature.
The other important thing is he's earned the respect of all the players,
the younger and older players.
"In a way personally I feel that it would be better for him to be
captain while there are some senior hands around in the team to help him
rather than him taking over when there is no one. You can look at it in
different ways.
"You never know whether he can handle the situation unless you give him
that opportunity. There were a few issues when I took over the captaincy
and to a certain extent I've been able to settle them. The team is more
focused on what they want to achieve now. It is a much settled set-up.
It could be the right time to give Angelo the captaincy."
One of the priorities of the team is to win a Test in Australia. It is
an achievement that has eluded many past Sri Lankan captains. Whether
the present team has it in them to tame Australia at this moment of time
seems questionable.
"No one gave us a chance to win in South Africa they were the No. 1 team
and to beat them on their home soil was a very big achievement,"
Jayawardene said. "We have the capacity and the talent to go and win a
match but how consistently we can do it is something we have to
challenge ourselves, that's where we lack. We are definitely in a
position to go and beat Australia and put pressure on them.
"When we played Australia in the last one-day series
we actually handled their bowlers in their conditions. We do play much
better when we are in that kind of situation when it is more challenging
and the conditions tough. We've shown that in South Africa and in
Australia in the ODI series when the Indians got bamboozled against the
same attack we were beating. We didn't perform against New Zealand when
we had a bad Test match. We had a couple of sessions that we didn't play
well. It doesn't mean that if we challenge their (Australian) bowling
unit and if we adapt and play better cricket there we can't hold them on
level terms.
"It's very much a mental thing. You have to be mentally stronger to beat
Australia. They will come at us. Everyone will know what you have to do
in Australia so knowing how you tackle that situation is the most
important thing. In a way it's like when you know what going to happen
you sometimes know too much about it and then you fall into a trap
rather than just concentrate on your strengths. That would be the way to
go."
Whether Sri Lanka wins a Test in Australia or not Jayawardene stated
that there was no substitute to winning a fifty-over World Cup. "Ask
any international cricketer, winning a 50-over World Cup will be one of
their priorities. That would always be my disappointment if I don't win a
World Cup before I retire. Definitely winning a Test in Australia would
be brilliant. We won a Test match in West Indies we've done that in
South Africa, in New Zealand and in England. We haven't won a Test in
Australia and India so we must try and get those two opportunities
before I hang up."
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