Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Jayawardene gears up for Asia Cup defense

Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene knows only too well the two best teams in the Asian Cup stand before his team and a title defense. If we have to win this tournament, we have to beat the best," Jayawardene said Tuesday _ a day before the 2004 champion takes on Bangladesh in its opening match of Group B, which also includes the United Arab Emirates.

It is very important for us as we are the defending champion of the Asia Cup and (also) the World Cup finalist," the veteran batsman said. Sri Lanka will be without injured fast bowlers Lasith Malinga and Farveez Maharoof, but Jayawardene maintains Sri Lanka still has enough firepower in its bowling attack to give Pakistan and India tough time, assume all three advance to the second round as expected. We are very passionate about playing cricket and winning matches for our country," Jayawardene said.

We have been working very hard in preparation for this tournament." Sri Lanka still has two world class bowlers who are sure to trouble the big teams in left-arm paceman Chaminda Vaas and prolific offspinner Muttiah Muralitharan. Despite its credentials in matching the world's top flight teams in limited-overs cricket, Sri Lanka has experienced a form slump since losing last year's World Cup final to Australia, winning just eight of its past 22 one dayers with three victories coming against lowly ranked Bangladesh.

It's not that we have been playing badly, we are not consistent with our game," Jayawardene said. There are some areas in which we needed improvement and hopefully we can get that all right in this tournament

Extracted from,
http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=sn&nid=448

No comments: