Samaraweera proves an overseas point

When Sri Lanka's squad for the Test series in South Africa was initially announced, Thilan Samaraweera wasn't a part of it. His selection was an afterthought, as cover for Mahela Jaywardene, who had injured his knee. At the end of the series, Sri Lankan fans would have been glad their selectors had an afterthought, for without Samaraweera's dogged displays, Sri Lanka's series would have looked much sorrier than it eventually did. His scores in the series read thus: 36, 32 (Centurion), 102, 43 (Durban) and 11, 115 not out (Cape Town). In each of those three Tests he scored more than any of his team-mates, and finished the series with 339 runs, 159 more than the next-highest (Kumar Sangakkara's 180). In all he scored almost a quarter of the total runs scored off the bat by Sri Lanka (339 out of 1441, 23.52%), and more runs than Sangakkara and Jayawardene managed together in their 12 innings. (To put that in perspective, Rahul Dravid scored 24.19% of India's bat runs on their tour to England last year.)

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