Born in May 1977, Mahela Jayawardene is one of the best cricketers the Sri Lankan cricket team has ever produced. He is a right-arm batsman who has such ability and the cricketing sense that he can bat at any position from the openers down to the 7th wicket. Known for his ability to build an innings in pressure situations, Jayawardene has scored more than 9000 runs in ODIs at an average of 32.68.
Jayawardene is one of the best batsmen today in the Sri Lankan cricket team. In the Cricket World Cup 2011, the Sri Lankan squad is considered to be a threat to the other teams due to the presence of class batsmen like Jayawardene and Kumara Sangakkara. Jayawardene is experienced and with his 9000 plus one-day international runs, he is the 13th highest run-scorer in the history of ODI cricket.
Jayawardene’s debut was in 1998 against Zimbabwe. By now he has played more than 330 matches. He has scored 12 hundreds and 55 fifties in his career so far. His highest score so far in an innings in ODI is 128 while the highest individual score in the world cup is 115 against New Zealand in the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
Some critics think that Jayawardene’s statistics do not justify the class he carries which is by far true. His ODI average is below 33 but he has the capacity of building an innings and his sheer determination and skills helped Sri Lanka in qualifying for the 2007 world cup cricket final.
With 28 centuries and 38 fifties in the Test career, Jayawardene has scored more than 9000 runs in Test cricket as well. His best innings so far were 374 runs. He has scored on an average of above 53 runs per innings in Test Cricket which is a very impressive figure.
In modern cricket, there are only a few batsmen who can be considered better than Mahela Jayawardene. He retired from his T20 career after winning the T20I world cup 2014 as a captain.
