Jayasuriya happy to bounce back

Sanath Jayasuriya believes that his side have turned the corner: "After the disappointing tour of South Africa we got back our confidence in New Zealand and we have shown it in the Test here," he said.

In South Africa the top order struggled, so he was delighted with the teams batting performance over the first two days: "It was a brilliant innings from Marvan. We have been looking forward to such an innings from him for a long time. It came and everybody is really happy that he made runs, as they are with Aravinda scoring a century. They have got their confidence back and that is good for the whole team."

Jayasuriya picked up eight wickets in the game and enjoyed the challenge: "We played with an extra batsman and only four bowlers so I knew I had to bowl a lot because we didn't have a left-arm spinner. I thought I bowled okay."

Although he found it hard bowling long spells, he believes he can continue as a main bowler in the series: "If I am bowling well we don't need a left-arm spinner and we can go into the next Test Match with a similar bowling attack to this one. We still need a specialist left-arm spinner in the squad however."

Jayasuriya defended Kumar Dharmasena, who claimed only one wicket in the match: "Dharmasena went through a hard time. In his first spell he did not bowl that well, but he came back and bowled well afterwards. Everybody expects him to get four or five wickets a game, but what we want him to do is to bowl tightly so that we can get wickets at the other end."

Like Whatmore, he was glad that Muralitharan played: "Even though he was fit, at the back of his mind he would have had some concern over his fitness. However, with the exception of one or two overs he bowled really well for us."

But, according to Jayasuriya the pitch was not the same one as last year against South Africa, where Muralitharan picked up 13 wickets: "This wicket is not jumping like the Galle wickets that we are used to playing on. It was a slow turning wicket, and therefore it was not easy to get wickets on it."

Jayasuriya confirmed that he spoke to the players after Singh wrote a letter after the third day's play. Despite four Sri Lankan players being fined by Match Referee, Hanumant Singh, he defended his team: "The players are human beings. They are used to appealing in these conditions where the ball is always turning and keeping low."