'We have to work hard to compete with Australia'

Mahela Jayawardene, the Sri Lankan captain, has said that other teams, including Sri Lanka, are not strong enough to beat Australia and have a lot of work to do to compete with the World Champions. Sri Lanka finished runners-up in the 2007 World Cup, losing the final against Australia by the D-L method.

"The Australians have the talent and ability to identify roles for individual players who can step into the plate most of the time," said Jayawardene. "There is always this confidence thing. There are 14 guys who believe in that. Mentally they are prepared for any situation because their domestic structure is such. Other countries including Sri Lanka are not strong enough. To be consistent as Australia, all 14 have to be prepared to take on that responsibility and be mentally tough."

Jayawardene said that his team had worked really hard and had the self belief and confidence to win the World Cup. "We identified a lot of roles for the guys. Everyone stepped up and performed. We played very good cricket under different conditions and situations, but we couldn't win the trophy. We had a chat after the final that we had given it our best shot and tried hard. We were disappointed we couldn't win it. The important thing is we can't go down from the World Cup just because we didn't win it. That day nothing worked for us.

"Gilly's innings was something special in a 38-over final. It was not that our guys bowled badly, he batted pretty well. It was difficult to contain him in that kind of mood. We knew with wickets in hand getting 120 runs in the last ten overs was a possibility. But with rain and Duckworth-Lewis we never had that edge. Australia came out of the blocks pretty quickly. Our bowling attack had pretty good variation and had more venom in it. But at the end of the day four of their bowlers ended up taking 20 wickets we had three. That was the difference."

Jayawardene praised the role Tom Moody, the coach, had played in shaping a competitive team. "Tom played a major part. He gave a lot of responsibilities to players. It was a difficult thing for some of the guys to understand and do. But now everyone wants to work hard for each other's success. That's the spirit he has brought into the team."

Jayawardene said the role he played while batting at No 3 in England worked on certain surfaces but not in the World cup where, because of the early start at 9.30 am, the ball was moving around and he could not play his normal game. "In such conditions we quickly switched back to the more conventional game with Sanga [Kumar Sangakkara] coming at three and me at four."

Marvan Atapattu did not play a single game in the World Cup but Jayawardene defended the decision to persist with Upul Tharanga as Sanath Jayasuriya's opening partner. "Leading upto the World Cup, Upul and Sanath were a very formidable opening combination. Chamara [Silva] came in and gave us something different at No. 5. [Tillakaratne] Dilshan and Russel [Arnold] played different roles. We didn't want to change anything going into the World Cup. Although Upul had his bad patches during the tournament we did not want to make any radical changes because we were winning matches as well.

"Marvan was an option for us all the time. We could use him at any time in a situation. He was a versatile guy who can bat middle order and open. Unfortunately we couldn't give him a game. For us it's all about playing to a plan. Tough call, he took it really well. As a senior player he was very understanding. We were always transparent in our decisions."

However with Arnold's retirement after the World Cup, Jayawardene saw Atapattu filling that role in the middle order. "Russel had a great career for Sri Lanka. He did all the dirty work for us and didn't get all the glamour like some of the others. He has done a lot of hard work and batting at his position he has a totally different role to play. I batted quite a few times and I know how hard it is. I had a lot of belief in Russel and appreciated the work he did."