A prolific, elegant and utterly classy batsman with a huge appetite for runs, and a calm yet authoritative captain - those are the qualities that best describe Mahela Jayawardene.

His sheer quality as a batsman was never in doubt even when he just entered the international scene, but for Jayawardene the biggest challenge has been to justify all the early hype.

With a combined Test and ODI tally in excess of 17,000 - and a captaincy stint that included a World Cup final appearance - it can safely be said that he has met that challenge more than adequately.