Mahela Jayawardene - an elegant cricketer from Sri Lanka

He is one of the best batsman in cricket at present. His wicket is the most priced by opponents. He can be easily defined as the most elegant batsman of the decade though strongly competed by the likes of India’s VVS Laxman. Yes, we are talking about the beautiful stroke maker from Sri Lanka – Mahela Jayawardene.

Jayawardene made his test debut in 1997 and his ODI debut the following season. In 2006, he made the highest score by a Sri Lankan in test scoring 374 against South Africa. He is considered to be one of the best batsman produced by Sri Lanka and is generally held in high regard as a legend of the modern game along with his team mate – Kumar Sangakara.

He has shown the world that batting is not all about muscle power. He has taken batting up to another level with his class and effortlessness. Even the casual followers of cricket would have laughed at you had you said about playing cricket (espesially batting ) without muscle strength. As Shane Warne had reinvented the subtle art of leg spin bowling , so has Mahela provided a new dimension to cricket with his unique style of batting.

Mahela Jayawardene can be absolutely demoralising when at his best . He is a silent monster, who can tear apart any bowling attack with ease. The thing that makes him so dangerous is that he is equally good against spin as well as pace. He caresses the ball so handsomely through the covers of the quickies or whips it behind square on the leg side when ever the ball is in line with the stumps. When the spinners come along, he can sweep, cut or use his feet to come down the track and loft over long on. But the Mahela special is the effortless inside out loft over covers which is easily the most beautiful thing you could ever see on a cricket ground. He is also a master of guiding the ball towards third man of the spinners with the slightest of touches. He has this natural ability to drain out hopes out of a bowler with his delicate stroke – play.

A complete batsman Mahela has a wide variety of strokes all around the ground. He can bat at any position. He opens the innings in T20′s, plays in the middle order in ODI’s and test matches. Unfortunately he is one of the most under rated cricketers of his time. He has been constantly over shadowed by his team mates like Jayasurya and Muralitharan or other players. In his favour, you could also say that he is unlucky that he played cricket in an era of immortals like Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Jacques Kallis. Their huge statistical displays makes him look a mere mortal. But let me tell you something, he still has got time to create a mark in the history of the game. We all know that he has got the talent to do that and I as a lot of the cricketing world feel that the best is yet to come from the bat of the classical Sri Lankan.