Melbourne, Mar 1 : His team's prospects of reaching the tri-series final have been dented after the massive loss to India but Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardene today said he is glad that at least the islanders' fortunes are still in their own hands unlike their sub-continental neighbours.
“Going in to the last game it's in our control, what we need to do. It's a good position for us to be, rather than depending on someone else to do some favours for us,” Jayawardene said.
If Australia beat Sri Lanka in tomorrow's last league match, India will be through to the best-of-three finals.
Sri Lanka were on course of a final berth before India left them demoralised by chasing 321 in less than 40 overs in their previous match.
“From where we started on this tour, I think we've improved as a team and maintained a consistency. That's very important for us going forward,” Jayawardene said.
“Whatever happens tomorrow we will definitely get a lot of positives out of this. Our challenge will be to try and keep this consistency going, because if we play the way we're playing now ... we'll win more matches than we lose. We're quite happy with that,” he added.
Jayawardene said his team has good all-rounders which wouldbe crucial.“Going forward we've always wanted to have two or three allrounders in a team.
These guys are taking responsibility. Angelo (Mathews) in the long run will probably be more of a batting allrounder than a bowling allrounder.
“Plus (Farveez) Maharoof is a guy who can bat as well and he's bowling pretty well, he just needs to have a bit more confidence in his batting.
All these three guys will be good options for us going forward. We just need a couple of spinning allrounders to come through and we'll have a really good balanced team,” he said.
