Sanath Jayasuriya changed how ODI innings start
Before the 1996 World Cup, ODI openers were expected to see off the new ball cautiously. Sanath Jayasuriya, promoted to open with Romesh Kaluwitharana, attacked it from the first over instead, and one-day cricket has been played that way ever since.
A long career begins slowly
Sanath Jayasuriya made his ODI debut for Sri Lanka against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in December 1989, and spent his first several years in the side as a middle-order batter and part-time slow left-arm bowler, useful but not yet the player who would go on to reshape one-day batting. His transformation came in the mid-1990s, and by the time his long career ended, against England at the Oval in 2011, he had played 445 ODIs, one of the highest totals recorded in the format, spanning more than two decades.
The 1996 World Cup
Ahead of the 1996 World Cup, Sri Lanka's coach Dav Whatmore and captain Arjuna Ranatunga made a decision that changed one-day cricket: they promoted Jayasuriya to open the innings alongside the wicketkeeper Romesh Kaluwitharana, with instructions to attack the fielding restrictions in the first fifteen overs rather than preserve wickets against the new ball. Jayasuriya took to the role immediately, scoring quickly and aggressively from the very first over of an innings, a method that unsettled bowling attacks built around the older, more cautious approach to opening. Sri Lanka won the tournament, beating Australia in the final, and the template Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana set at the top of the order was copied by other teams within a few years and remains, in essence, how ODI and Twenty20 innings are opened today.
By the archive, Jayasuriya batted in the opening position in 259 of his 433 ODI innings, comfortably his most common role, and scored the overwhelming majority of his runs from there. The archive also records 124 innings at number two, meaning Jayasuriya spent 383 of his 433 innings, nearly all of them, in one of the top two positions, a remarkably consistent role for a career that ran to more than two decades.
189 in Sharjah
Jayasuriya's highest ODI score, 189, came against India at Sharjah in October 2000, made from 161 balls, and remains one of the largest innings played in the format's history from an opening position. It heads his five best innings on the archive ahead of 157 against the Netherlands at Amstelveen in 2006 and 152 against England at Headingley in 2006, both also made at pace from the top of the order. The Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka's home fortress through most of his career, was his most productive venue overall: 71 matches, 2,514 runs, also his most-visited ground of all. Sharjah, where Sri Lanka also played heavily during Jayasuriya's career, followed some way behind: 58 matches, 1,831 runs, a reminder of how much of his volume came from those two grounds alone.
A genuine all-rounder
Jayasuriya was also a capable slow left-arm bowler for most of his career, taking 323 ODI wickets in the archive with a best of 6 for 29 against England at Moratuwa in 1993, figures that place him among the leading all-rounders the one-day game has produced. He was named Player of the Match 48 times across his career, one of the highest totals recorded in the archive, a reflection of how often both his batting and his bowling combined to decide a match outright. His bowling was built on a flat, quick trajectory rather than the loop and drift of a more traditional spinner, a style that made him difficult to attack even on flat pitches and that fitted naturally alongside his own aggressive approach as a batter, since it gave the opposition few easy overs to target regardless of which discipline he was engaged in at the time.
His 6 for 29 against England at Moratuwa remains his best figures in the archive, and his other four best bowling performances, against Pakistan, Australia, West Indies and Bangladesh, show the same low, skidding style troubling batting line-ups more accustomed to facing orthodox spin than his quicker, flatter variety of it.
Captain of Sri Lanka
Jayasuriya captained Sri Lanka in 118 ODIs in the archive, winning 66 and losing 47, a lengthy spell that included leading the side to the final of the 2007 World Cup, where Sri Lanka lost to Australia. His best decade by volume in the archive was the 2000s, 8,305 runs from 246 matches, the period that included both his 189 in Sharjah and the bulk of his time as captain. He continued playing international cricket well into his forties, retiring from ODIs only in 2011, a longevity matched by very few players in the format's history and one that let him add to his totals for years after most of his contemporaries had already retired. His 28 centuries against 68 fifties shows a lower conversion rate than some of his contemporaries, a fair reflection of an opener who regularly got starts at high speed but who, by the same aggressive method, was also more likely than a purely accumulative batter to get out once well set rather than convert every fifty into a hundred. Even so, 445 matches is among the highest totals recorded in one-day international history, a volume that meant his eventual career numbers stayed enormous regardless of the exact conversion rate from any single innings.
The numbers
The full ODI record: 445 matches, 433 innings, 18 not outs, 13,430 runs at an average just above 32, a highest score of 189, 28 hundreds and 68 fifties, alongside 323 wickets with the ball. Sri Lanka won 233 of the matches he played, lost 193, with 3 tied and 16 with no result. His most productive opponent with the bat was India, 89 matches, 2,899 runs, ahead of Pakistan on 82 matches and 2,517 runs, two rivalries that ran through the whole of his long career.
Sources
- CricArcade ODI archive: Sanath Jayasuriya's full career record and scorecard links
- ESPNcricinfo: Sanath Jayasuriya player profile and ODI career statistics
- Wikipedia: Sanath Jayasuriya