'Centuries don?t matter... I want to win'

"It is disappointing that I couldn't finish off the game against India," the Sanath Jayasuriya tells Jaideep Ghosh.

Cricket is a fickle game. A player can be a superstar one day, and castigated as a misfit the next.

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Former Sri Lankan captain Sanath Jayasuriya has seen it all, from a glorious World Cup win to overt comments about how he no longer fits into the team. He has taken it all in his stride, and back-to-back centuries against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup here have sent him soaring up the ratings again.

"It is difficult," Jayasuriya said, recalling the tough times and bad form of the recent past. "But I thought I should not worry about those past games or innings. You won't gain anything by thinking about the past. I always believed I should just play my natural game whenever I bat.

"Because I didn't perform in the last few matches they (the critics) said that I didn't do well. I always take criticism in my stride and as long as I'm trying to perform to the best of my ability nothing else matters. I think I achieved that."

Jayasuriya had looked like fair game for all the bowlers when the Asia Cup began, but once he got his feet and arms going against Bangladesh, he was virtually unstoppable.

The century he scored against India was one of his best, and only after his dismissal could India think of winning, and staying in the tournament.

"Whenever you get a hundred you always feel good, especially when you are coming out of a bad patch. I played really hard cricket in the Bangladesh and India matches."

One cold statistic about Jayasuriya has almost gone unnoticed. The loss against India was the first when Jayasuriya got a hundred while chasing. Of his 18 one-day hundreds, 15 have come while chasing, and apart from the last game, 14 times Sri Lanka have won. Jayasuriya is aware of that.

"It is disappointing that I couldn't finish off the game against India. I don't want to get a hundred and see Sri Lanka lose. This is the first time that I got a hundred and Sri Lanka lost the match. I have never got a hundred and ended on the losing side. It was very disappointing.

"I'm not worried about getting a century, I'm not that kind of a person who goes after hundreds but I would have been happy had we won. We would have won the match had I not got out. I think, I was a little hasty (in coming down the track to Virender Sehwag, and holing out) and I think I shouldn't have done that. I was disappointed with myself."

Sri Lanka were just 17 runs away at that time. "I always felt as long as Upul Chandana was around we would get it," Jayasuriya says.

"Even Nuwan (Zoysa) and (Ferveez) Maharoof can bat. With the exception of (Lasith) Malinga all the others can bat, so I thought we could get it. I had a lot of faith in them but we couldn't finish it off."

Asked what is it about the Indian bowlers he loves so much, he just smiles.

"Everybody asks me the same thing all the time. Whenever I play against India I seem to get runs. It's not that I'm playing against India, it's just that I want to perform each time I go out to bat. In my case I have got a lot of runs against the Indians but that doesn't mean that I don't want to do it against other teams. I do my best all the time."

Interested in captaining Sri Lanka again? "No, no, I haven't thought of that at all."

Almost every current senior cricketer seems to be targeting the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies as a milestone, maybe even the last one of his career.

Asked if he would be around that long, Jayasuriya replied: "It depends, how you perform and how physically fit you are. I don't have long-term plans. I go tour by tour, maybe take it series by series even. That's the best way to perform. I have done well in the past few series except for the one against Australia and let's see how it goes. (The World Cup) is still three years to go, a long time away!"