If cricket is a team game than he is a complete team man ,
if a teams performance depends on its captain than he is a as clever a captain
that every team demands ,if cricket is all about scoring runs than he had thousands
of them to count ,if cricket is all about performing consistently than his long
cricketing career answers your question.Cricket is blessed to have a student like Denagamage Praboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene
(Mahela Jayawardene) who had respected the game and played it with the defined
set of rules of cricket.
Over 17 years in international cricket , more than 23 thousand runs under his belt ,50 international hundreds ,highest number of catches in ODI (204) -the stats says it all about the former Sri Lankan Captain who had announced his retirement from Test cricket on 14 July 2014,which means another gem of a player became history in test cricket.
Mahela Jayawardene was among the Sri Lanka's most successful captains who had made me his admirer through his great cricketing mind . He has that gifted ability to switch his game according to the format- be its ODI ,Tests or T20,thats the reason that he had not only scored runs in all the format but is among the rarest cricketers in this modern day competitive cricket on whom selection committee relied and elected as a captain in all the formats.In fact it is because of captaincy only he has been the first choice for captain for IPL teams as well. Always Cricket First is the principle which he had followed rigorously throughout his career and hence was always available for Sri Lankan team whether it is for selection , for taking his team out from difficult situations or helping in the reformation of team .
15 May 2011 was the day when i got the opportunity to watch this iconic cricketer live in action on cricketing field from stands. I really consider myself lucky that i got the opportunity to watch his captaincy ,watch his batting , watch his fielding,watch his team winning under his captaincy ,all live on ground.The memories of that day are still alive and would always be.
I wonder whether world cricket will have another nearly perfect cricketer ever who had achieved all the milestones with his fair play and inculcated the same in his team.
What a captain , what a player ,actually a perfect cricketer.
No comments:
Post a Comment