We must fight for each run and wicket – Mahela

BRISBANE, March 3 - Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene said that his team would make every endavour to take early advantage in the best-of three-finals of the Commonwealth Bank three-nation tournament which begins on Sunday.

“We decided to forget what happened against India in Hobart and wanted to focus on the last league game against Australia last Friday. I am glad we pulled it off. Similarly, we will fight until the last ball in the finals,” he said on the eve of the first of the three finals. He said the morale of the team is high after Friday’s exciting win, their third out of four outings against Australia in the league round.

“It would mean a lot for us to beat Australia in the finals over the coming week. We have not won a tri-series here before, although we did beat Australia 2-1 last time we toured, in 2010. You come into these tournaments wanting to win and it is brilliant to have achieved our first goal of reaching the finals, but the hard work is yet to come,” he said.

But Jayawardene cautioned his team ahead of the crucial hurdle. “Australia are a tough opponent. They will come hard at us in the first final so it's important we keep calm and play our natural game. We have been handling the tough situations better than them in the past few matches and we need to keep doing that,” he added.

He said that it will be tough task to beat Australia in the finals. “But we will go in confident because we have beaten them in the last three matches. To beat Australia you have to compete with them. You need to fight with them for each run, each wicket. That's what we have been doing, and we have handled some situations better than them. We haven't let them take the game away from us. It's very important when you play Australia that you don't let them loose. You have to keep at them all the time,” he stressed.

However, Jayawardene cautioned his team, saying that the hosts will still be confident because the matches against Sri Lanka have been closely fought.

“They haven't been big wins for us. In any format, the start is very important - that's when the platform is built. We've managed to keep Australia's openers quiet so far and hopefully we can do that in the finals as well. We have kept our plans to them nice and simple - bowling straight and adapting well to different surfaces,” he said.