Mahela Jayawardene

Who is Mahela Jayawardene?

Denagamage Praboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene, known as Mahela Jayawardene, is a professional Sri Lankan cricketer and a former captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team. He is a specialist batsman.

Jayawardene made his Test cricket debut in 1997 and his One Day International debut the following season. In 2006 he made the highest ever score by a Sri Lankan in Test cricket, scoring 374 in the second Test of Sri Lanka's home series against South Africa. He has a test cricket average of over 50 and a One Day average in the 30s. He is the first player in the history of Sri Lankan cricket to score over 10,000 Test runs. Despite his relatively low ODI average, Jayawardene is considered to be one of the best batsmen produced by Sri Lanka and is generally held in high regard as a legend of the modern game along with team-mate Kumar Sangakkara. He is one of only three Sri Lankans—the others being Sanath Jayasuriya and Sangakkara—to have scored more than 10,000 runs in ODIs.

Jayawardene was a key member of the team that won the 2014 World T20 as well as the team that made the finals of the 2007 World Cup, the 2011 World Cup and 2012 World T20.