Published: Aug 12, 2011, 10:37 AM (IST)
Edited: Apr 15, 2014, 02:35 PM (IST)
With six wickets in the second T20, Ajantha Mendis will remain the danger bowler for Australia in the remaining ODI matches of the series © Getty Images
By Mahela Jayawardene
Winning the T20 Series against Australia was tempered by the manner of our loss on Wednesday in the first of five ODI matches between the two teams. We performed very well in the T20s with captain Tillakaratne Dilshan completely taking the game away from the Australians in the first match. It was a typical Dilshan knock with outrageous stroke play. And in that mood, Dilshan is a nightmare for captains to set fields to.
The second T20 match will always be remembered as Ajantha Mendis’ match whose figures of 4-1-16-6 is going to take some beating and is destined to be in the record books for some time.
Having been left out of the team in recent times, Mendis’ come-back was as emphatic as you can get, and he had the inexperienced Aussie batting line-up in all sorts of trouble.
This match will also be remembered for “that” catch which I, of course, have been credited with. But as we all know, it was a magical moment of brilliance from Angelo Mathews that claimed the wicket of David Warner and I was just happy to finish off the effort.
Having watched the replays, it looks every bit as impressive as I thought it was when lurking close to him on the field. Even in slow motion it is clearly a brilliant effort but I think to really appreciate what he did, it must be watched at normal speed. Only then do you realise how little time he had to act given his foot speed and close proximity to the boundary at the time of catching the ball.
For the ODIs, we certainly knew that Australia was going to be an even tougher prospect with Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey coming in to the team. And we certainly know that the Aussies are always tough opponents wherever they play.
Winning the toss was useful and it was good to see Upul Tharanga back in business and he and Dilshan got us off to a decent start. None of us capitalised on this, however, and what followed was a very poor team batting effort.
While credit has to go to Mitchell Johnson for a brilliant bowling effort of 6 for 31, there is no doubt that we aided his cause with many of the batsmen playing poor shots which resulted in too many soft dismissals.
It was not a case of the batsmen still being in T20 mode as suggested by some, but more a case of simply not playing smart cricket.
At the end of the day, notwithstanding the great fight shown by Suraj Randiv and Nuwan Kulasekera with the bat, we fell way short of what was a competitive total.
It was a disappointing ending for the fans that packed the Pallekelle Stadium for all three matches and who helped to create a brilliant atmosphere at all the matches.
We are now in Hambantota with a couple of days to re-group before the second match. We need to come back hard at the Aussies and will focus on sticking to our game plans and playing smart cricket.
(Mahela Jayawardene is arguably the greatest batsman Sri Lanka has produced and one of the greats in the history of the game. A former captain of Sri Lanka, the classy Jayawardene has scored close to 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs while represented his nation in almost 500 matches. The articulate Jayawardene pens his thoughts at http://blog.mahelajayawardena.lk/)
