The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Jayawardene scores century

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Thursday, Jun 29, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

Jayawardene scores century

Ted Corbett

MANCHESTER: Mahele Jayawardene is in such good form that for half his innings at Old Trafford on Wednesday he was curling the ball through the field, using shots that might have come from Roger Federer's racket. Heavens, the Sri Lankan captain is batting beautifully, mostly off the front foot too, as innings of 84, 66, 126 and 100 — his eighth one-day century — confirm. That's a aggregate of 376 and an average of 94; no wonder England is in danger of being whitewashed at home. He says he wants to hand the leadership back to the injured Marvan Atapattu but he has now scored 601 during 15 games in charge. By the time Sri Lanka had accumulated 318 it was favourite to lead 4-0 but only if the weather allowed the match to finish without the aid of the Duckworth and Lewis calculations.

Cricket days in Manchester begin with a weather forecast and you need local knowledge to read them efficiently. Today's included the dreaded phrase "prolonged showers" which means serious rain. The other threat was to England, disintegrating before our eyes as injury, unqualified youngsters and constantly changing leadership caused chaos against a team gaining confidence with every victory and without Muttiah Muralitharan. Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood were missing today so that as England sat down to breakfast I knew only half the squad. Some of the players may have felt the same concern.

Breezy start

Jayawardene won the toss and, seeing a tan pitch in a sea of green under high cloud, had not choice but to bat. For the first 25 overs runs came as if the match were being played at double speed. Sanath Jayasuriya went early caught on the boundary off Steve Harmison who celebrated vigorously even though it needed sharp work by Jamie Dalrmple to prevent the ball going for six.

Upul Tharanga and Jayawardene thrashed their way to 102 in 15 overs; Jayawardene hit 50 off 32 balls which brought a gasp. It might have been an England record but still rates poorly in the world. The rest of his runs came, carved through deep set fields, at a run a ball so that his whole innings of 100 needed only 83 balls. One ball later he misjudged pace and flight to give Dalrymple, the best of the colts, his second wicket. Dalrymple's off spin also had the wicket of Tharanga once again doing his impression of Jayasuriya for 60 runs off 80 balls. Lets not pretend Dalrymple is perfect. He dropped Jayawardene twice at seven and 27; his return of 10-0-44-2 will be no consolation.

Numerologists will note that the next four batsmen to be out all made seven; cricket nuts will see that after the initial burst of 180 off 30 overs only 81 were scored in the next 15. The last five brought 57 more, enough to daunt an experienced side, enough to give England's underlings a nervous rash.

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