Golden bat for Jayasuria on completing 20 years in cricket

MUMBAI – Disappointment was clearly within his heart when Sanath Jayasuriya, in his recent interview to cricinfo, said, “the sad thing is, I don’t know whether the Sri Lankan cricket board is even aware that I’m completing 20 years today!” Jayasuriya made his ODI debut against Australia at Melbourne exactly 20 years ago on 26th December 1989.
Jayasuriya has seen the felicitation of his IPL-teammate Sachin Tendulkar who had received a warm felicitation for completing the same number of years in cricket.
“Yes, we are aware about his services to the nation,” DS D’Silva, the chairman and Nishantha Ranatunga, the board secretary said from Colombo. “We (the interm committee members) have agreed to felicitate him on his return to Sri Lanka,” they further added. “We shall present him a golden bat worth Rs 5,00,000.” However, Jayasuriya may have to wait for the golden bat. “We are waiting for the big occasion to present him this bat,” the chairman said. Sadly, it had not been announced officially yet.
Interestingly, Sanath Jayasuriya is the first cricketer to be appointed as a UN Goodwill Ambassador (by UNAIDS, Geneva) for his commitment to prevention of HIV/AIDS among young people in Sri Lanka.
He is the only player to score more than 13,000 runs and capture more than 300 wickets in one day internationals.
The SLC board is not likely to take action against Indian cricket board for the bad-pitch at Kotla where the match had to be called off for uneven bounce in the wicket. “We shall first see what the match-referee (Australia’s A G Hurst) has to say in his report to the ICC before reacting on the match,” D’Silva added.