It has been announced today that former Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene will lead Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in a T20 Triangular Tournament with Nepal and the Netherlands, which will take place at Lord’s next month.
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The tournament, to be held at the Home of Cricket on Sunday 29th July, will see MCC face the two ICC associate nations before the pair do battle in the last of three T20 matches on the day.
Jayawardene, regarded as one of Sri Lanka’s finest-ever players, is in the top three of his country’s all-time leading run-scorers in all three formats of the game, and his name appears twice on the Honours Board in the visitors’ dressing room at Lord’s, for centuries against England in 2002 and 2006. He became an Honorary Life Member of MCC in 2015.
He made almost 12,000 runs in his 149 Test matches, averaging 49.84, as well as 12,650 runs in One-Day Internationals, averaging 33.37 across 448 matches. He also played 55 T20 Internationals, scoring 1,493 runs. In all, he made 54 centuries for his country across the three formats.
Aside from the many teams he has represented around the globe in T20 cricket, Jayawardene has experience in domestic T20 in England with both Somerset and Sussex.
MCC has also announced that three Scotland players will be included in its squad. Dylan Budge, Alasdair Evans and Mark Watt all featured in Scotland’s first-ever One-Day International win against England at Edinburgh earlier this month and also played for MCC in two T20 matches against the Aboriginal XI at Arundel Castle on 5th June, with middle-order batsman Budge scoring 52 and 43 not out.
Left-arm spinner Watt took three key wickets in the win over England, whilst right-arm seamer Evans also claimed two important scalps, and followed up with figures of 3 for 23 in Scotland’s first T20 against Pakistan later the same week.
