Cardiff: The two stars the Sri Lanka cricket team looks up to for inspiration are Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene.
Sangakkara ensured the team a stunning victory over England through his sparkling century, while Jayawardene scored an unbeaten 84 against Australia to book his team a place in the semi-final.
The pressure is on every player to perform and Sangakkara has a simple piece of advice: “We know we need to lift every department of our game. We must do it, whatever happens on the field. The key is to try and win and win at the end of the day,” he says.
Sangakkara does not believe that his team lacks confidence but he wants them to start well in big matches.
“We’ve done pretty well in big tournaments, but I think we need to keep working on starting tournaments really well.”
Jayawardene believes that momentum matters a lot in short tournaments. He says that, to pull off close victories, every player has to think on their feet. “You need to be creative and patient to win matches,” he says.
According to Jayawardene, an important factor is the passion to win matches.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a semi-final or final or just a group game, as long as you have that attitude and passion to win, you will go a long way.”
Sangakkara attributes his form to sheer hard work: “You can go in and out of form at certain times, but when you come in and prepare really hard and well leading up to a series, it does pay off. I worked pretty hard in the first two weeks that we were here in the practice games as well as at the nets, and I’m pretty happy that it worked for me.”
Sangakkara also feels that the pride of representing one’s country should bring the best out of every player.
“We should be proud to play for Sri Lanka and we are all very proud to be Sri Lankan. We should all be happy here representing our country,” he says.
Sangakkara says his only regret is never having scored in a global event’s final and steering the team to victory.
Going by his form and burning desire, he may do it this time — if he can stop the Indians in the semi-final.
