'We want to win everything that we play' - Jayawardene

The format of the Champions Trophy is such that the title holders, West Indies, and one of the really in-form teams in the world at the moment, Sri Lanka, are forced to play qualifying matches against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh to get into the main draw. This was because of their rankings on April 1, 2006, when the seedings for the tournament were decided. However, now Sri Lanka need just one more win, against Zimbabwe, to be virtually guaranteed a place in the main phase.

"That [getting two wins under the belt and qualifying] is going to be our first goal," said Mahela Jayawardene, captain of the Sri Lankan team, in a pre-match press conference ahead of Tuesday's match against Zimbabwe in Ahmedabad. "If we have two wins we're probably through. We don't think about where we want to be in the group, that's a matter for later. We want to win everything that we play. You have to play good cricket and make sure that you win all your games. That is the way we want to play."

It has been taken for granted, that barring a sensational upset or two, Sri Lanka and West Indies would go through to the next round, while Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would miss out. Interestingly, Tom Moody, Sri Lanka's coach, said he was taking nothing for granted, and insisted he was not looking beyond the job at hand. "We haven't thought beyond the qualifying stage," he said. "We set a target of winning every game in the qualifying stage, and we haven't looked beyond that. When we've achieved that goal we'll look ahead, see what group we're in and reassess our targets at that stage."

One thing that will concern both coach and captain is the indiscipline in the bowling in the first match, especially that of Dilhara Fernando, who contributed four no-balls and three wides in Sri Lanka's whopping total of 36 extras. Jayawardene acknowledged this. "We were not that disciplined in the bowling department in the last game. There were a lot of extras, and specifically Dilhara didn't get things going early on," said Jayawardene. "But Dilhara was a matchwinner for us in England. We have to back him 100%, it was just a one-off game [against Bangladesh]. He's been working really hard.

"All the bowlers did put in the effort but we relaxed a bit towards the middle of the game where we knew we were cruising. It's an important tournament and we don't want to tax ourselves. We want everyone to be fresh. We didn't come off our gameplan, we were very aggressive from the start itself, but once we realised we had the game in our hands we let go a bit. We'll look into the number of extras we gave and that's an area we'll definitely rectify."