We need to annoy the opposition

Our tour to Australia has been preceded by hype and controversy, but now that we're here it's all about the challenges that lie ahead. Australia is a great place to play cricket and we know we have a great opportunity to achieve something special.

Nobody who was part of the last tour, in 2004, will deny that we became a mentally tougher outfit at the end of the series, despite going down 0-1. It was a Top End tour, and we lost the first Test in Darwin but came back superbly to draw a thrilling match in Cairns. We managed more than 200 runs in only one of the four innings and it cost us the series.

The key to playing in Australia is to enjoy the competition. You've got be prepared to grit your teeth, take body blows and keep going. There will be tough periods but you need to get through them with a lot of heart and character.

There is a certain satisfaction in grinding it out. An ugly fifty or ugly hundred when you're struggling is more valuable than a century in a session. We need to take up time and annoy the opposition. We couldn't combine as a batting unit against England in the one-dayers recently but we know exactly what is expected of us here. If we show heart and stomach for a fight, we should be alright in Australia.

We haven't played Test cricket in a while, since playing Bangladesh earlier this year but I believe the good players can isolate different aspects of the game. The key is to focus and then re-focus your thoughts. One-dayers and Twenty20s are about hitting the ball, but Test cricket is about hitting only the bad balls: it's more a game of letting the ball go. A lot of batsmen think being positive is hitting the ball, but a good positive sign is also getting behind the ball, blocking without hesitation, and using your arms with attitude and intent. That sends out the same message to a bowler that hitting a couple of boundaries off him does. Those are the things we've been working on.

There's been a debate raging about the last-minute inclusion of Marvan Atapattu, but it's a tremendous boost for the team. He's one of the best players we've produced in Sri Lanka. Everyone speaks of him being technically correct and beautiful to watch, but he's also a tough character. Marvan and Sanath [Jayasuriya] are the only two of the current team to have scored hundreds in Australia, and their store of experience will be vital for all of us. When Marvan got a hundred in Cairns last time, we ended up playing around him and putting up 455.

The biggest plus from that tour was the bowling of Lasith Malinga, and he returns now with a much bigger reputation, as part of a really balanced bowling attack. Dilhara Fernando deserves a special mention: in the past six months he's shown he has a heart to match the size of his body by working extremely hard. Everyone knows he had a problem with overstepping, but he was magnificent against England. He bowled with accuracy and pace, with hardly any no-balls. Farveez Maharoof is a hugely talented bowler who has the makings of becoming the sort of elusive match-winning allrounder that teams look for. And leading the pack, as always, will be Chaminda Vaas. There's a big downside to being Vaasy: he's so accurate that he goes unnoticed. A special day for someone seems like just another day for him. But put Vaasy alongside Dilhara, Lasith and the others and you see the buoyant faces. He runs in, same pace, same swing, same length all the time. It seems to be ordinary, but he makes it special.

And then there's Murali. It means a lot to everyone in Sri Lanka that Murali is going to Australia and trying to break the record there. I think he treated the Australian spectators to a wonderful spell of bowling in the Super Series Test there in 2005. Murali knows his stats to the last detail and he'll know his two other Tests in Australia have produced only three wickets. He'll be devising plans and strategies to get wickets this time.

He has missed some cricket recently and can't wait to get back. Nobody is more excited to play than Murali. He was so annoyed at missing the England series. We used to have three or four phone calls a day from him saying, "When will I be ready? We should be doing this, doing that." He's going to be as excited as a schoolboy. But Murali also realises that his getting those nine wickets is only part of this tour. The bigger picture is to beat Australia; everything else is related to that.