Col­in Croft

The crick­eter's crick­eter per­forms to the high­est lev­els, with in­tegri­ty and fair­ness, be­ing as ag­gres­sive as ever, pro­vid­ing in­spi­ra­tion to those who al­so play at that high lev­el, or want to play there. He must al­so be ap­proach­able, by any­one. Ex­treme­ly few qual­i­fy. Sri Lan­ka's Sanath Jaya­suriya does as he talks to Col­in Croft in this in­ter­view. Jaya­suriya, near­ly 41 years old, has as­tound­ing crick­et­ing records: (a) 110 Tests, 6973 runs, h.s. 340, avg. 40.07, 98 wick­ets. (b) 444 ODI's, 13428 runs, h.s. 189, avg. 32.43, 322 wick­ets. (c) 77 T-20's, 1773 runs, h.s. 114, avg. 24.97, 57 wick­ets. "Jaya" seems to have been around crick­et for­ev­er!

Col­in Croft (CC): You are a re­al live crick­et leg­end. Should I ad­dress you as the "Ho­n­ourable" Sanath Jaya­suriya? You are now a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an.

Sanath Jaya­suriya (SJ): As in my crick­et ca­reer, I did the hard po­lit­i­cal cam­paign, did the elec­tions and won very eas­i­ly in my home-town; Matara Dis­trict.

CC: We do not want to speak much about pol­i­tics, but they do mix, in your case. How did you man­age to get here?

SJ: Iron­i­cal­ly, as a boy, I saw the West In­dies. When I start­ed to play at school, I thought of them. I have worked very hard, train­ing hard. You have to do that or you would not last any time at all, much less 20 years. When you have the nat­ur­al love of a game, and have done so much hard work over the years, re­al­is­ing that you have had so much dif­fi­cul­ty to get in­to the team in the first place, you know that you will have to keep up that work eth­ic to still be play­ing. I eat well, train hard and fo­cus on my ef­forts and work; ma­jor keys to fit­ness and suc­cess.

CC: You have been very in­volved in the re­assess­ment of Sri Lankan and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, es­pe­cial­ly the short­er form, the 50 ODI's.

SJ: My ap­proach to bat­ting changed just be­fore the 1996 World Cup. It changed my ca­reer. Ro­mesh (Kaluwith­a­rana) and my­self were pro­mot­ed to give us a good start. It worked. Since then, I have been open­ing in every ver­sion of the game, es­pe­cial­ly the one-day­ers, for about 12 years.

CC: You have be­come a util­i­ty crick­eter, the ul­ti­mate all-rounder.

SJ: You must al­so re­mem­ber that in ODI's and Tests, I have played as a spin­ner. Some­times, the op­por­tu­ni­ty that you hope for nev­er comes, but you take the one that does. In the West In­dies, the pitch­es are al­ways slow, so I can al­ways make use of my left-arm spin.

CC: You had re­tired once, and were then en­cour­aged to re­turn by Sri Lan­ka's min­is­ter of sport. Is there any thought of that now, as you have just be­come a par­lia­men­tar­i­an?

SJ: I had re­tired from Test match­es. So, I came back to play those. Now, I on­ly want to play 50-over and 20-over crick­et. My key, at the end of this year, is to as­sess my in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer over­all, but I am go­ing along, tour by tour, for now.

CC: You were Sri Lan­ka's cap­tain from 1999 to 2003, mak­ing cap­tain­cy look so easy.

SJ: When I be­came cap­tain, I took over from Ar­ju­na (Ranatun­ga), who had been cap­tain for 10 years. I had no ex­pe­ri­ence in cap­tain­cy what­so­ev­er. I had a young team, be­cause that is where our tran­si­tion start­ed for the fu­ture. At that time, we had six great play­ers, but we al­so knew that we need­ed to get some new­er play­ers in too; Ar­ju­na Ranatun­ga, Ar­avin­da De Sil­va, Roshan Ma­hana­ma, Hashan Tel­lakaratne and Asan­ka Gu­rus­in­ha. They all went out of our team at the same time. The team that I got was very young in age and ex­pe­ri­ence. Every­one sup­port­ed me and I looked to them for sup­port too. The first six months were cru­cial. Both Ar­ju­na and Ar­avin­da played on and helped me im­mense­ly with my cap­tain­cy. Even­tu­al­ly, I did well as my coun­try's cap­tain.

CC: Af­ter play­ing for 20 years, you have, in­ter­est­ing­ly, fol­lowed Ar­ju­na Ranatun­ga and Hashan Tillikaratne in­to pol­i­tics.

SJ: I need to do much work for the peo­ple of Sri Lan­ka in the po­lit­i­cal field, es­pe­cial­ly in my im­me­di­ate area. They have put their faith in me and I have great re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. That is why they put me on first place in the bal­lots. They know how hard I can work and have giv­en me that ho­n­our of help­ing and rep­re­sent­ing them. I think that in this present Sri Lan­ka gov­ern­ment and Pres­i­dent Mahin­da Ra­japak­sa, I will get much help for my lo­cal area, and for the coun­try's gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment.

CC: What was your best mo­ment in crick­et?

SJ: Cer­tain­ly the ICC World Cup 1996 vic­to­ry for Sri Lan­ka was the great­est high­light and will al­ways be re­mem­bered. No­body thought that we could play such good crick­et. On­ly af­ter we had won that com­pe­ti­tion did our play­ers get con­tin­u­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to play more Tests, coun­ty crick­et and go over­seas.

CC: You have 27 runs less than 7000 Test runs and 2 wick­ets less than 100 Test wick­ets. Did you not think of get­ting those few?

SJ: Look, I am ex­treme­ly lucky, hap­py and ho­n­oured to have played so much and so well for my coun­try. I know that I helped change what an open­ing bats­man is sup­posed to be.

CC: Some of the field­ing that is seen in T-20 crick­et is un­be­liev­able. How do you cope?

SJ: I do ex­act­ly the work that the oth­ers do, then do some more. I nev­er do any­thing loose. I need to be fit, as what­ev­er you are do­ing, you need to be run­ning from the very first ball, to the end of a T-20 game.

CC: This T-20 in the Caribbean could be your last in­ter­na­tion­al world event, but there is the ICC 50-over World Cup in Asia next year. Could you be tempt­ed to play?

SJ: That has been in the back of my mind. If I per­form, I could be se­lect­ed.

CC: When this T-20 2010 start­ed, I picked Sri Lan­ka as the po­ten­tial win­ners. Yet, you lost the first game to New Zealand.

SJ: We were bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed when New Zealand beat us. We made many lit­tle mis­takes, which added up to a ma­jor loss. We sim­ply can­not re­peat that sort of game if we are to progress to the fi­nal and per­haps win. Last year, we lost that fi­nal to Pak­istan, an­oth­er great dis­ap­point­ment for us. All that we have to do now is play as we know that we can.

CC: How would you like to be re­mem­bered in the an­nals of crick­et? Peo­ple talk about Shane Warne, Bri­an Lara, Ar­ju­na Ranatun­ga, Al­lan Bor­der, Viv Richards. I would put you in that group of unique­ly spe­cial crick­eters that we have ever seen.

SJ: If I have done some­thing spe­cial and rep­re­sent­ed my coun­try well, and peo­ple think that I de­serve the mem­o­ry and re­spect, then that is good. I would dear­ly love to play to the ICC 2011 (50-over) Crick­et World Cup, to fin­ish up my ca­reer.

CC: I hope that you play longer than just the ICC 2011 World Cup. Thank you.

SJ: Thank you, Crofty. I too ap­pre­ci­ate that leg­ends like you want to talk to me.