Jayawardene to quit captaincy
February 11, 2009 
Jayawardene, Sri Lanka’s most successful test captain, met with national selectors earlier in the day and informed them of his decision to quit the captaincy.
“In the best interests of the Sri Lanka team, I have decided to stand down as Sri Lanka captain after this Pakistan tour”.
“This is something I have been considering for some time as it has been my long-held belief that my successor should have at least 18 months in the job to imprint his vision on the team for the 2011 World Cup”.
During the past three months Jayawardene has struggled with the bat in one-day cricket,
Jayawardene’s win ratio as test captain was 63 percent, the highest in Sri Lanka’s 27-year test history, and for ODIs it was 57 percent.
In 2006 the ICC named Jayawardene Test Captain of the Year and in both 2007 and 2008 Sri Lanka won the ICC Spirit of Cricket Award under his leadership.
Sri Lanka, under Jayawardene, lost the recent ODI series 1-4 against India at home, though they had won the three-match series in Pakistan.
Jayawardene, his deputy Kumar Sangakkara and world’s highest wicket-taker in both Tests and ODIs Muttiah Muralitharan were not included in the Twenty20 side that lost to India Tuesday night.
[...] at home and their recent lacklustre performances in Bangladesh, this was perhaps the wrong time for Mahela to resign. And he did it in the worst way possible, saying that he would stay on until after the tour to [...]