COLOMBO, AUG 7: Sanath Jayasuriya's name will be mentioned with the very best in contemporary game when the merits of batting comes up for discussion. His innings of 340 has earned him that honour.

He will be talked about in the same breath as batsmen like Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and Mark Waugh. In fact, for sheer utility value batting, bowling and fielding there is nobody in the same league as Jayasuriya, especially in the overs-limit format.

It was primarily Jayasuriya's brilliance and innovativeness which gave the limited-overs a new perspective in the first 15 overs. It was like the first part of a two-phase slog. But it would be demeaning to reduce Jayasuriya's batting talents to mere slogging. There is a method in every shot he plays with an excellent hand-eye coordination. The willow obeying the dictates of the master with fine-tuned precision. It is this unalloyed aggression, the ability to hit through the line and all around the wicket, that has earned him the reputation of being the most destructive batsman in the world.Not since the days of Viv Richards has one seen a batsman supremely gifted and with innovative abilities to put the good balls away so consistently. No captain can set a field for such brilliant improvisation, and no bowler can do anything if his best deliveries tattoo the boundaryline billboards at regular intervals.

It is this talent which has helped Jayasuriya set a spate of world records in One-Day Internationals: the fastest 50 (in 17 balls), the fastest hundred (in 48 balls) which was later supplanted by Shahid Afridi (in 40 balls) and the most number of sixes in an innings (11). He is almost like a hand grenade without the pin.

The fact that he is also Sri Lanka's highest wicket-taker in ODIs with 116 wickets is overshadowed by his prodigious batting feats.

Jayasuriya's has been a rags-to-riches fairly tale. Before the Wills World Cup, he had scored 1776 runs (19.73 avge) in 98 ODIs. But he emerged against all expectations as the Most Valuable Player of the Championship by scoring at over two runs per ball. Since the start of the World Cup, he has scored 1416 from 39 ODIs, almost doubling his batting average.

How did the tranformation to a world class player come in so short a time? One of the reasons could be the difference in his level of fitness in the past and his current physical condition.

Alex Kountouri gave The Indian Express an insight into Jayasuriya's fitness, which has been the talking point since his marathon effort against India: ``Fitness was not among Sanath's priority. He was among least fittest in the team. He had the ability to score 60s and 70s before getting out due to fatigue. The powers of endurance were absent in him''.

The Greek-Australian from Melbourne, who has changed the work ethics of the Lankans with his fitness regimes, opined that Jayasuriya is a completely transformed man today.

``Sanath is now a very good athlete. His muscle content is very high as against the fat percentage of his body. It obviously gives him more power, which combined with his sense of timing makes him such a dangerous batsman.''While everybody is singing paens of Jayasuriya and Mahanama, the contribution of Kountouri in the pair's piece de resistance is underplayed. Kountouri took care of their specific needs right through their monumental endurance with great diligence. He revealed that he made them lie down on the floor during the lunch and tea breaks and put their legs up. This was to drain out the lactic acid from collecting in the legs and tiring them out. Jayasuriya and Mahanama were even eating and drinking in that posture besides getting a massage. Besides, he kept forcing them to take a great deal of fluid during the innings.

The sheer physical effort and the protracted ability to concentrate for long spells were two of the greatest factors during Jayasuriya's epic innings. The wicket may have been batsmen-friendly, but it still requires something out of the ordinary to achieve what Jayasuriya did.

As David Gower once said: ``Whatever talents God bestowed on you, you still need the power to drive you to make the best use of those talents. It's no use having a Bentley Continental parked in the drive with no fuel in the tank.''

For well over two days, with every passing moment, Jayasuriya was deriving energy and drive from his supporters to pass one milestone after another. He was not moving in his customary fifth gear. It was a pace quite alien to him. The destination was important, the speed was not. And he was almost there when he crashed.

There was not a more poignant scene one had witnessed on the Test arena as tears streamed down his ebony-hued visage. It could rank with one of the saddest moments in Test on par with Sir Don Bradman's duck in his final Test innings.

Jayasuriya came to the dressing room, slumped in his chair and was oblivious of everything around him in his saddest moment of his life, which paradoxically, came with the happiest moment. He had not only moved millions of Lankan fans to tears but several of his team-mates too.

There was one innocent soul in the evening who asked Jayasuriya in his moment of grief: ``Can you do it for us (break Lara's record) another time?''John Snow, the great English fast bowler and a poet, once wrote: ``... for the tears you cry will dry, in tomorrow's warmer sun''.

Jayasuriya may well find solace in those two lines. And probably an answer to that touching question from his fan.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.