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| Wednesday, 19 May 2004 |
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Marathon man Marvan wants to end career on high note Sa'adi Thawfeeq reporting from Zimbabwe BULAWAYO, Tuesday - Man-of-the-Series Marvan Atapattu said that he would be more than happy if he could retire from international cricket averaging over 40 in both forms of the game. The Sri Lanka captain and opening batsman who is the sheet anchor of the team was in outstanding form against the weak Zimbabwean bowling attack compiling scores of 170 in the first Test at Harare and a career best 249 in the second Test at Bulawayo to pick up the man of the series award. Atapattu's two monumental innings lifted his Test career average to the 40-mark for the first time in his 73-Test career. He began the series with an average of 37.78 and boosted it to 40.88 from 4538 runs by averaging 209.50 in the series, which concluded here on Monday. Overall he batted a total of 848 minutes to frustrate the young and inexperienced bowlers. Atapattu joined teammates Sanath Jayasuriya, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene and Tilan Samaraweera who all sport averages of 40 and over in their Test batting careers. Atapattu was quick to point out that it was not the best of bowling attacks in the world that he scored these runs against. "But you've still got to concentrate in getting a big innings. That is one thing common to any batsman. Playing against any team the concentration has to be there to get to a double hundred," he said. For a batsman who began his Test career with five ducks in his first six innings, it is some kind of an achievement to come all this far. "I have got 18 ducks in my Test career, five of them at the beginning. Such things don't help me in getting my average upto 40. It was a bit hard for me to get there, but when you get an opportunity like this (against Zimbabwe) you might as well step on the accelerator and do the best you can and make the most of it," said Atapattu. "Cricket today is so competitive that if you can have an average of over 40 as a batsman you should be happy. We have about four batsmen in our side averaging over 40. It gives the side some confidence to have batsmen with that kind of average," he said. In recent times Atapattu has been getting himself out by dragging the ball onto the stumps and getting bowled or being trapped leg before wicket. "Getting bowled is not a common thing for an opening bat but getting lbw and getting caught in the slips are quite common. If I get to a 40 or 50 I try to make the most of it. It is only me who knows how hard it is to get a start as an opening batsman," said Atapattu. "There was a time when I have got out quite often by hanging my bat out and getting caught at slips. Time to time certain changes can happen in our batting and they lead to such dismissals," he said. Atapattu, who is 33, said that he was fortunate to make a start like this as captain of the national team. "I would have preferred to have played the full Zimbabwe side and got the same result." He took over the Test captaincy from Hashan Tillakaratne at the end of the Australian series in March. He averages 37.00 in one-day internationals having scored 6696 runs from 210 matches. |
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