Match against South Africa is not grudge match: Jayawardene

Ahmedabad, Oct 23 (UNI) Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene today denied that his team was treating tomorrow's Champions Trophy match against South Africa as a grudge match.

Jayawardene was speaking to reporters at a pre-match news conference at the Sardar Patel stadium, Motera here.

The Sri Lankan captain when told that the South African wicket-keeper Mark Boucher had termed tomorrow's match as a grudge match for the remarks of the South Africans being chickens thrown at them for abandoning the Sri Lanka tri-series following security concerns, Jayawardene said ''Mark [Boucher] can call it anything he wants. For me, it is not about revenge or grudge. We are all professionals and are here to play cricket. The media can build up any type of hype,'' he said.

''I know teams who have been called worse things. I do not believe Mark really means it. We players never responded to South Africa leaving the Sri Lankan shores. We never called them chickens. But if they want to treat this as a grudge match, I think we are in good hands. Their focus will not be on cricket then. So we will be happy about that.'' Jayawardene, however, dismissed any suggestions that his team had these matters in mind when looking forward to tomorrow's game. He was merely interested in winning a game of cricket that was crucial to his team's chances of progressing to the next round in this competition.

''We are pretty serious about tomorrow's game because it is a crucial game for us and we want to emerge winners in that,'' he said. ''We have already played a match here earlier and we are hoping to derive some positives out of it,'' he added.

Spin played a huge role in Sri Lanka's comprehensive win over New Zealand in Mumbai, with Muttiah Muralitharan and Sanath Jayasuriya being the wreckers in chief. But Jayawardene conceded that the South Africans were good players of spin.

''South Africa play spin pretty well,'' he said. ''They showed in recent matches that they can handle spin as well as any other team.

The advantage we have is that Sanath is an experienced player and Murali is exceptional, and that give us a lot of flexibility.'' Jayawardene also refused to look too much into how the pitch would behave. ''All the pitches in India will assist spinners, but it depends to what extent. The wicket here will differ to the ones in Mumbai, Mohali or Jaipur,'' he said.

''Fortunately we have the luxury of a lot of part-time spinners in the side and all of them are very experienced. They can adapt to different conditions. Until we play on the pitch, I cannot say it will suit us,'' he added.

Jayawardene also shared the good news of Sanath Jayasuriya becoming a proud father to a baby boy. Jayasuriya became a father just before our last game. He flew back and spent some quality time with his new-born. He got back last night and is in a good mood,'' said Jayawardene.

''In situations like these, the family always comes first. We were in a good position to release him and give him that extra bit of time to spend with his family,'' he said, adding with a smile: ''We have a boy who might play for Sri Lanka one day.'' UNI GS SSS DH BD1932