One of the modern greats, Sri Lankan batting star Sanath Jayasuriya, has announced his retirement from test matches. He will continue to play one-day internationals, where his aggressive batting style is more valuable, and hopes to play in the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.

Test cricket, where matches last five days, is notoriously dull. A batsman need be in no hurry to score runs. I once saw England’s Nasser Hussain score only one run from the first 30 deliveries he faced. The one-day game is more exciting, and Jayasuriya has helped make it so.

Jayasuriya’s lasting contribution was to be one of the first batsmen to recognize that in the one-day game, with the batting team limited to 50 overs (at 6 deliveries per over, that’s 300 deliveries from the other team’s bowlers), it pays to score rapidly. More teams lose by scoring too few runs from their 50 overs than by using up all their outs, so go for a high number of runs per over, even at a greater risk of making an out. In a 1996 match against Pakistan, Jayasuriya scored 76 runs off of just 28 balls, an astounding run rate. The most common result from a batted ball is one run; hitting it beyond the boundary scores four (or six if it clears the boundary on the fly). Jayasuriya's performance that day was like a baseball player hitting five home runs in a game.