Jayawardene warns team-mates of hard work ahead

Hambantota (Sri Lanka), Feb 21 (PTI) Sri Lanka won theirfirst World Cup match with ease against minnows Canada, butformer captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team-mates ofhard work ahead as their real test of character in themega-event will begin when they take on Pakistan on February26 in Colombo.

"We had a few nerves before the game against Canadastarted, just to get on with the World Cup in front of our owncrowd. The first game in a tournament is always important andit''s not easy to play a team like Canada. You''ve got to makesure that you come in prepared," Jayawardene, who starred inSri Lanka''s 210-run win with a 81-ball 100, said.

"It''s a good start (to the tournament) and a lot of hardwork ahead of us with other teams. Now we look forward to ournext match against Pakistan (February 26). Pakistan have gotsome great individual players and we play them quite often andwe know how dangerous they can be, so we have to do ourhomework right and prepare ourselves and go in with a verypositive mindset," Jayawardene added.

Emphasising on the need to prepare evenly-balancedwickets, Jayawardene, who scored Sri Lanka''s fastest World Cupcentury in their match against Canada yesterday, expressedconcern that not all the wickets will be as balanced as thosein Sri Lanka, which is co-hosting the tournament with Indiaand Bangladesh.

"We need to prepare good wickets which suits us, but notlike big turners.

"I saw the wickets in Chennai and Bangalore. I thoughtthey have much more spin than here. These wickets are morefair, a little bit of bounce for fast bowlers (and) movement,"said Jayawardene, adding that spin-friendly pitches give anundue advantage to the teams batting first after winning thetoss in normal weather conditions, as wickets deteriorateeventually that suit a spin attack in the later stage of agame. .