Mahela Jayawardene’s illustrious Test career will end after the second Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, currently underway at Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) in Colombo.
As the cricket world prepares to bid him farewell, Wisden India looks at the numbers that have defined his 17 seasons of Test cricket.
0 South Africa is the only country where Jayawardene hasn’t scored a century.
1 Jayawardene opened for the first and only time in his career in the second innings of the recently concluded Galle Test against Pakistan.
3 Man of the Series awards that Jayawardene has won, all against England.
5 Of the 34 Test centuries he has scored, five came in 2007 – the most in a calendar year for Jayawardene.
6 The number of wickets Jayawardene has picked up.
7 Only Don Bradman (12), Kumar Sangakkara (10) and Brian Lara (9) have more 200-plus scores in Test cricket than Jayawardene’s seven.
No. 7 In his second Test, against India at SSC in 2006, Jayawardene batted as low as No. 7 for the first and only time in his career.
8 Saeed Ajmal has accounted for Jayawardene the most number of times, followed by Junaid Khan and Andrew Flintoff, who have dismissed him six times each.
15 The number of times Jayawardene has been dismissed for a duck, the first being against Pakistan in the final of the 1999 Asian Test Championship.
16 The number of first-class matches Jayawardene had played when he became Sri Lanka’s 69th Test cricketer.
47.36 Jayawardene’s win percentage as Sri Lanka captain – joint best with Sanath Jayasuriya. Both of them won 18 out of their 38 Tests as captain. Jayawardene scored 3665 runs at an average of 59.11 while leading the side.
50 Number of venues around the world where Jayawardene has played Test cricket.
60 The number of Test series Jayawardene has been a part of.
60.46 Jayawardene’s average in the first Test of a series. In the only one-off Test he played, against England in 1998, he made nine runs.
66 The number of runs Jayawardene contributed in a mammoth 952 for 6 – the highest innings total in Test cricket – on his Test debut against India in August 1997.
67.12 Jayawardene’s average in the second innings of a match is the best, where he has scored 8597 of his runs. He averages the lowest – 29.92 – in the first innings of a game.
77 Number of catches he has held off Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling, the highest for any bowler-fielder combination in history.
170 His highest average in a series, which came in the two-match series against South Africa at home in 2006. He has averaged more than 100 six times in a series.
202 The number of catches Jayawardene, one of only three men with 200 or more catches, has taken before the start of the farewell Test. He stands second on the list – Jacques Kallis has 200 – behind Rahul Dravid’s 210. Of these, 23 came in 2004 and 122 have been taken in Sri Lanka.
374 His highest Test score, which came against South Africa at SSC in 2006.
400 The number of runs scored by Jayawardene in six Test wins outside Asia and apart from in Zimbabwe. If the three wins against Zimbabwe are included, his tally goes up to 634. Kumar Sangakkara is the only Sri Lankan with more runs in wins outside Asia.
624 In the same innings where he made 374, he recorded the highest partnership for any wicket with Sangakkara. They passed the 576-run stand put together by Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama against India on Jayawardene’s debut.
1194 The number of runs in 2009 is the most he has scored in a calendar year. The previous occasion when he had scored more than 1000 runs in a year was in 2001.
2212 His tally of runs against England is the most he has made against any opponent.
4647 The number of runs Jayawardene has scored, at an average of 39.71, in 61 overseas Tests.
9451 The number of runs he has scored at No. 4 is second only to Sachin Tendulkar.
Retired Out Against Bangladesh at SSC in September 2001, Jayawardene and Marvan Atapattu became the only two batsmen to be dismissed ‘retired out’ in Test cricket. Atapattu (201) and Jayawardene (150) were called back to the dressing room by Jayasuriya, the captain, and describing the incident, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack reported, “Reaction was strong: some in the Sri Lankan press claimed Test cricket had been demeaned.”
Milestones that await Jayawardene in his final Test
5 catches will take his tally against Pakistan to 39 – currently, his maximum against one team is 38 (England).
35 A hundred will take Jayawardene past Sunil Gavaskar and Brian Lara to the fifth position in the list of century makers. Of Jayawardene’s 34 hundreds, 23 have come at home and 14 as captain.
36 runs between Jayawardene and Sangakkara will take their partnership tally to 6483, ahead of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, to No. 2. Jayawardene and Sangakkara have so far batted together in 119 innings for 6447 runs. The pair of Tendulkar and Dravid heads the list with 6920 runs.
50 runs will take his tally under Angelo Mathews’ captaincy to 1000. Jayawardene prospered the most under Jayasuriya, when he made 2572 runs in 37 matches. It will also take his tally of half-centuries to 50. Sangakkara is the only Sri Lankan with more half-centuries than him.
55 runs will take his tally for 2014 to 1000.
108 runs will take him to the second spot, past Tendulkar, in the list of batsmen with most runs at home, behind Ricky Ponting, who scored 7578 home runs. Currently, Jayawardene is third in the list with 7109 runs from 80 matches.
137 runs will make him the first batsman to score 3000 Test runs at one venue. Jayawardene has so far made 2863 runs in 26 matches at SSC. In the list of batsmen with most runs at one venue, Jayawardene slots in at second place too, having made 2382 runs in 23 matches at Galle International Stadium.
149 Jayawardene’s tally of Test matches. He is the highest capped Sri Lankan cricketer, way ahead of Muralitharan (132).
198 runs will take his tally past Lara’s 11,953. Jayawardene’s current aggregate is 11,756 at an average of 50.02.
All numbers are updated till the start of the second Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
