I would love to groom another leader: Mahela

Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene said he still retains the passion to represent his country and play at the highest level; but reiterated that he sees his current stint as skipper only as a stop-gap arrangement.

\\Jayawardene, who replaced Tillakaratne Dilshan as Sri Lanka captain after the tour of South Africa, has had decent success in his comeback to the role leading his team to the Commonwealth Bank tri-series finals in Australia as well as drawing the two-Test series against England. Jayawardene had been struggling to score runs in Tests recently, but roared back to form as he scored 354 runs, including two centuries against Andrew Strauss’s team.

Talking about this stint as captain, Jayawardene said he has taken it up as a short-term job until a suitable successor is found. “I’ve been given the challenge to lead the team and took that for 12 months to see what happens. I would love to groom another leader and hand it over to him as quickly as possible. That’s the way Sri Lanka cricket should move on,” he was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

On drawing curtains on his illustrious international career, the 34-year-old Jayawardene said it depends on the hunger he has for the game, adding “so long as I’m performing to the standards I’ve set myself I’ll play for a little longer”.

Jayawardene, who is now in India to play for the Delhi Daredevils in the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League, also said Sri Lanka need to be consistent and patient with their selections to be successful in the longer term.

He also admitted the in-form Rangana Herath needs greater support from the rest of the bowling attack. “The challenge I have is to try and not do the same thing we did with Murali (Muralitharan) and leave it as one bowler we depend on. We need two or three bowlers so we can take the pressure off him,” the Sri Lanka captain said.

Jayawardene, who has scored more than 10,000 runs in Tests as well as ODIs, also has 46 centuries and 107 half-centuries to his credit in international cricket.