Too early to judge Virat Kohli’s captaincy: Mahela Jayawardene

It’s always been a wonderful place to come and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing cricket here in India. The memories have been formed from way back in 1998, which was my first tour with the national team. Since then, I’ve been a regular visitor. I’ve very much enjoyed myself. The hospitality is great and the cricket is fantastic. I’m going to enjoy this too, and have good, fond memories.

On Lanka’s Performance

We won both the Test and ODI series in England. But if you see, there are about six-seven players missing from that squad due to injuries and various other reasons. Because of that we gave opportunities to other players. That’s what international cricket is all about. We had a fantastic year so far. We won the Asia Cup and the World T20 before winning in England. The only series we lost was to South Africa at home but we had beaten Pakistan. You can’t take away all the good work that we’ve done throughout the year just because of three bad games we have had here. We will analyse and see what went wrong. Obviously, the performance in all three departments hasn’t been up to the mark and we accept that. Once we get all our players back from injuries and other situations, we will play some good cricket. I’m looking forward to that.

On WC preparations

Things are on the right track. If you take the last two editions of the World Cup, in 2007, no one gave us a chance. At the end of the day, India went out of the group and we came through and went all the way. In the last edition, we handled the pressure and came all the way again. I think we have that knack of rising to the big occasions and handling the pressure… What we need to do is to make sure our preparations are good. After this, we have seven ODIs against England at home, and then another seven matches in New Zealand. That will give us much better preparation.

On the final two matches

Both teams still have a lot to prove. India have made a few changes. So I don’t think they will take it lightly. Rohit (Sharma) wants to get back, Robin (Uthappa) is back, so that’s an opportunity for those guys to show what they’ve got. We also want to play for our pride as well and take something back from this tour.

On Kohli, the captain

He has had a great start. He takes the aggression that he has in his batting into his captaincy as well, which is a good thing. But we need to wait and see and analyse how he will fare over a longer period.