Mahela's unfulfilled promise, and England's weakness against left-armers

It's all in the mind
A few years ago, Mahela Jayawardene was touted as the next big hope in Sri Lankan cricket; some even went so far as to suggest that he was the best young batsman in the world, and the next in line to take the mantle from Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara. If that seemed an accurate assessment then, it seems way off the mark now - Jayawardene would struggle to make it into a list of top 20 batsmen in the world today.

In terms of batting aesthetics, he has it all - an organised defence, exhilarating strokes all around the wicket, and an easy elegance which makes him among the most attractive batsman to watch when in full flight. The stats don't stack up too badly either - 4306 runs in 61 Tests at a healthy average of 47.84 - that's higher that Graham Thorpe (43.93), VVS Laxman (46.54) and Stephen Fleming (38.65). However, in that list of 20, all three would figure, Jayawardene would probably miss out.

The career batting average is a good measure of a batsman's ability, but greatness is often measured by other yardsticks - the ability to stand up and be counted when the chips are down, for instance. The three batsmen listed above have done it on numerous occasions; with Jayawardene, you'd struggle to name one.

Check these numbers out: at home, he averages a phenomenal 57, overseas it plummets by 20 runs. His combined average against Australia, Pakistan and South Africa - three of the best bowling attacks in the world - is 34; the corresponding figure against India, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh is 70. In 14 innings in Australia and South Africa, he has only managed one fifty-plus score. Get the picture?

Another trait which puts him in the underachievers category is a tendency to throw away starts - 11 hundreds and 20 fifties isn't a very impressive conversion ratio, but worryingly, he has shown no signs of improving with experience.

Over the last two years (since July 2002), he has been dismissed between 15 and 70 as many as 18 times in 27 innings (excludes innings where he was unbeaten for less than 70). That's 67% - an incredibly high figure for a top-order batsman. The table below offers some perspective of how skewed those figures are: for Rahul Dravid, the percentage is less than 25, while for Tendulkar, Lara and Kallis it is below 40%. And closer home, Jayawardene only needs to look at his captain's stats for inspiration - in his last ten innings, Marvan Atapattu has either scored less than 15, or more than 117 (his scores read 9, 8, 118, 14, 170, 249, 4, 10, 133 and 9).

There is one batsman, though, who belongs in the Jayawardene category: many of the adjectives used to describe Jayawardene's batting apply to Damien Martyn as well - perhaps in a higher degree - and both tend to throw away starts too. Eighteen of Martyn's last 30 innings fall within the 15-70 range.

It's often said that a batsman's best years lie between the ages of 28 and 32. Going by that logic, there's still time for Jayawardene to take his batting to the next level - he only turned 27 in May this year. The next couple of years will decide if he can indeed make that leap and be rated alongside Aravinda de Silva as Sri Lanka's best, or if he'll merely remain a good player who failed to make the most of his talents.

England's left-arm woes
James Franklin's impressive performance against England in the NatWest Series only underscored the problems that English batsmen have had against left-arm seamers over the last few years. England got his number in the last league match, when Franklin went for 53 from his eight overs, but he was quite unstoppable in their previous encounter, taking 5 for 42, and the Man-of-the-Match award.

As the table below indicates, left-arm seamers have had plenty of success in ODIs against England. The outstanding performance in the last four years came from Ashish Nehra, who ripped out six batsmen for 23 in a matchwinning spell at Durban in the 2003 World Cup, but Chaminda Vaas has consistently achieved a fair degree of success too. The prominent failure in the list is a certain Wasim Akram - three wickets in five games at nearly 60 apiece. Did someone say England's batsmen can't play left-arm pace?