da luck： Kumar Sangakkara spoke to the media after the third day of the Kandy Test
Charlie Austin24-Jul-2005
Kumar Sangakkara en route to his ninth Test century © Getty Images
On scoring a century in front of his home crowd
It was always a dream of mine to get a hundred in Kandy and it was also asituation which the team needed runs. It was a great team effort today.There was a lot of joy at reaching my hundred as the last three innings Ihave played were great personal disappointments. Once I got a start here myonly ambition was to stay out there as long as possible and work as hard aspossible. It was one of the hardest-working hundreds that I have scored andit was in a situation where we needed to score over 300 to win the game.This is right up there with my other hundreds.On the pitch
I thought it was a difficult wicket but it was slightly easier for theleft-handers as the soft spots were outside the right-handers off stump. Butit was a challenge and I enjoyed it very much.On his technical changes before this innings
No matter how many runs you score cricket is about keeping things simple andin the last few innings that is something I have forgotten to do. One of thethings that I realised was that I was not focusing enough on the ball andthat was one of the changes I did before this innings and it worked.On his non-selection for the World XI Test squad for the ICC Super Series
Selectors like God move in mysterious ways, but as long as I do a good jobfor my country then it does not matter what comes after that. Therecognition that comes from being selected for teams like that is somethingthat comes after doing your job for the side. Selection is still up for grabs and it is just aboutperforming day in and day out on the field.On the state of the game
We were looking for something over 250 and anything over 300 would be abonus. Right now, we are just going to try and bat them out of the game.