Former Sri Lanka batter Sanath Jayasuriya felt nostalgic as he recalled his time with Indian Premier League (IPL) side Mumbai Indians (MI), where he shared some memorable time with cricket legends like Sachin Tendulkar.
In a recent interview with Sportskeeda, Jayasuriya opened about the team environment at Mumbai Indians and said that all the players in the team were like a family to him.
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“Mumbai is my second home. In and out we were there and playing. The team and the team owners were really good and they looked after all the players. It’s like a family,” said Jayasuriya.
The former Sri Lanka skipper also talked about his batting partnerships with Tendulkar. “Batting with Sachin was quite relaxing as he would always come and say what to do. He always kept talking about ways to execute plans and win matches,” mentioned Jayasuriya.
Jayasuriya and Tendulkar played quite a lot of matches together wherein their partnership used to be rock solid. While playing together, both of them registered more than 55,000 runs to their name in international cricket and the duo also hold various records.
Apart from Tendulkar, Jayasuriya also spoke about other MI teammates, with whom he used to enjoy in the dressing room. He was all praises for Harbhajan Singh who made him laugh and kept the dressing room lively.
“Harbhajan Singh always used to come up with nice humour, making us laugh all the time and he kept the dressing room alive,” the Sri Lankan remembered.
Left-handed Jayasuriya played for the Mumbai outfit for three seasons from 2008 to 2010 and scored 768 runs from 30 matches, which featured a ton and four half-centuries.
In the very first season of Jayasuriya’s IPL career, he had hit a blazing ton against Chennai Super Kings (CSK). At 38, he plundered the opposition bowlers and hit eleven sixes and nine boundaries to remain unbeaten on 114. Mumbai won that contest by nine wickets with 37 deliveries to spare.
Jayasuriya’s career has been phenomenal as he scored 13,430 runs in ODI cricket and 6973 runs in Test cricket. He even played 31 T20Is matches in his career and gathered 629 runs.
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