Mahela Jayawardene

Denagamage Proboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene, known as Mahela Jayawardene, born 27 May, 1977, is the vice captain and temporary captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team. He is a specialist batsman who has a Test average close to 50, and an ODI average in the 30s.

Cricket career

Mahela Jayawardene was the runner-up best schoolboy cricketer during the 1994 cricketing season when he first played cricket for Nalanda College.

He made his Test debut in the record breaking Test in 1997 against India at R.P.S., Colombo. Mahela Jayawardene added 66 to the massive score. That same match, Sanath Jayasuriya played a man of the match performance with a score of 340. Sri Lanka ended up scoring 952/6, the highest ever Test score. Jayawardene was at the crease when they surpassed the previous highest Test score. Jayawardene apparently developed an appetite for big scores, with scores like the 167 against New Zealand and the brilliant 242 against India.

His One Day International debut was against Zimbabwe at Premadasa in January 1998. They won the match, with Jayawardene hitting the winning run. In his second game, Jayawardene scored a 74 against Zimbabwe. It took only 11 matches before he scored his first century, which was against England in the Carlton and United World Series game at Adelaide. Jayawardene entered a pressure situation, with Sri Lanka struggling at 134/4. The 21 year old Sri Lankan, managed to post a scintillating 120 runs to win the match.

Jayawardene was captain recently during the England tour in the absence of Maravan Attapatu. He led his team to 1-1 draw in the test series and an emphatic whitewash (5-0) in the ODI series.

In the first Test of the 2006 Test series against South Africa, Jayawardene shared a world record stand of 624 with Kumar Sangakkara. This partnership, the highest for any wicket in first-class cricket history, and the first instance of a stand of 600 or more in a first-class or Test match innings, smashed the previous third wicket stance for Sri Lanka, surpassing 262 which involved himself along with Thilan Samaraweera. It also broke the previous record for the third wicket for all test playing nations surpassing the 467 run partnership made by the New Zealand pair of Martin Crowe and Andrew Jones which came in 1991 against Sri Lanka. Jayawardene became the first Sri-Lankan captain to score a test triple-century, making a superb 374 runs off 572 deliveries with 43 fours and 1 six, the fourth highest score in test match cricket. His score was also the highest score by a Sri Lankan in a test match innings surpassing Sanath Jayasuriya's 340 in 1997 against India.

Off the field

Off the field, he has won great admiration for his huge personal contribution to the HOPE cancer project. His cricketing career ground to a halt in the most tragic of circumstances, when a brain tumour claimed the life of his younger brother Dhishal, who was just 16 at the time. At the time, Mahela was captain of his school team and gave up cricket for six months. Eventually he was persuaded to go on and set about to rebuild his career. With memories of Dhishal in mind, he became the leading campaigner of HOPE. Now, with the support of his team-mates, he aims to build a new 750-bed cancer unit at Maharagama, the country's only dedicated Cancer Hospital. Jayawardene has much cricket left in him, and it is likely that when the time comes, he will take over as captain of Sri Lanka. In the mean time, his fans expect to enjoy seeing additions to his 6 ODI centuries, and his 13 Test centuries.

Quote

“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.” -Mahela Jayawardene

Player Statistics

Career Performance

File:Mahela Jayawardene.png

Mahela Jayawardene's career performance graph.

Test Centuries

The following table illustrates a summary of the test centuries scored by Mahela Jayawardene

In the column Runs, * indicates being not out
The column title Match refers to the Match Number of the player's career

Test Centuries of Mahela Jayawardene
	Runs	Match	Against	City/Country	Venue	Year
[1]	167	4	New Zealand	Galle, Sri Lanka	Galle Stadium	1998
[2]	242	7	India	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club Ground	1999
[3]	167	22	South Africa	Galle, Sri Lanka	Galle Stadium	2000
[4]	101*	24	South Africa	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club Ground	2000
[5]	101	29	England	Kandy, Sri Lanka	Asgiriya Stadium	2001
[6]	104	32	India	Kandy, Sri Lanka	Asgiriya Stadium	2001
[7]	139	33	India	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club	2001
[8]	150	34	Bangladesh	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club	2001
[9]	107	42	England	London, England	Lord’s	2002
[10]	134	54	England	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club Ground	2003
[11]	100*	59	Zimbabwe	Bulawayo, Zimbabwe	Queens Sports Club	2004
[12]	237	62	South Africa	Galle, Sri Lanka	Galle Stadium	2004
[13]	141	66	New Zealand	Napier, New Zealand	McLean Park	2005
[14]	119	79	England	London, England	Lord’s	2006
[15]	374	82	South Africa	Colombo, Sri Lanka	Sinhalese Sports Club Ground	2006

One Day International Centuries

ODI Centuries of Mahela Jayawardene
	Runs	Match	Against	City/Country	Venue	Year
[1]	120	11	England	Adelaide, Australia	Adelaide Oval	1999
[2]	101	19	Pakistan	Visakhapatnam, India	Indira Priyadarshini Stadium	1999
[3]	128	57	India	Sharjah, UAE	Sharjah C.A. Stadium	2000
[4]	101*	71	England	Colombo, Sri Lanka	R. Premadasa Stadium	2001
[5]	116	74	New Zealand	UAE	Sharjah C.A. Stadium	2001
[6]	106	93	West Indies	Kandy, Sri Lanka	Asgiriya Stadium	2001
[7]	126*	216	England	Chester-le-Street, England	Riverside Ground	2006
[8]	100	217	England	Manchester, England	Old Trafford	2006

External links

Mahela Jayawardene

Source: [1], 30 July 2006