Sri Lanka have to perform at 105 per cent to succeed for a second time within a decade, while Australia can do with 85 per cent to win the seventh edition of the World Cup in Barbados on Saturday. After Australian cricket, I admire the Sri Lankan brand of the game. It has much to do with the fact that their cricketers came into Test cricket back in 1980 with the aggression and adventurousness of ODI practitioners which they really were.

By then they did have a few who had played English county cricket and understood the merits of patience and the need to build an innings. But of the home grown batsman, only Mike Tissera (manager of the present side) and Anura Tennekoon looked like long innings players.

Of course things have long changed for the better, though the Sri Lankans are more at home in the limited overs matches even now. And this is why those who are familiar with them and admire them are not in the least surprised that the team is in the final. However, whether Mahela Jayawardene’s gallant men can overcome the last hurdle which is posed by formidable Australia, is what everybody wants to know.

Sri Lanka can, provided they play at 105 per cent, which means hope that everything clicks and each player does more than his appointed role. Australia in a way can even afford to play at 85 per cent and win the Cup for the third time in succession. This view has something to do with the fact that the players are used to winning. Winnng regularly, after all, entails vast experience of different matches, big chases, recovering from a collapse of the middle order or from a poor beginning and then coming through. However, Australia, despite their impressive number of wins over the years, do not have the aura of invincibility that the West Indies teams under Clive Lloyd seemed to have. But even that team had to eat humble pie in 1983 on that famous day in June at Lord’s. Was there one person who had gone to the Ladbrookes tent and even put a penny on India?

No Australian ODI team could match the brilliance of those West Indies teams man to man. But temperamentally the Australians have always been ahead. They play the closest to method cricket and occasionally are nonplussed when they come up against someone like V. V.S. Laxman or a Brian Lara.

The Sri Lankans have the flair mind you and Jayawardene is aware that his side has better bowling all round than Arjuna Ranatunga’s winning side in Lahore in 1996. But the present team is lacking a batsman of the quality of the admirable Aravinda de Silva who at number three or four had this wonderful capacity to shift gear. Kumar Sangakkara who, mans the same position in the present team, is no doubt gifted and dangerous but has yet to show that he is a rounded batsman. He is prone to soft dismissals which Aravinda was not.

True, Jayawardene is calmness personified and the rock, but if a situation arises when he has to innovate and take a risk or two, would he have the courage?

I did not like Jayasuriya’s reaction to his dismissal against New Zealand in the semifinal. He gave me the impression that he was regretting getting out cheaply in what might have been his last World Cup innings. But he has got another dig coming. He can make amends. Like him on the other side, and the same age too, is the in-form Matthew Hayden. Has there been a more powerful striker in World Cup history? I am not referring to the odd strike but consistently powerful striking. Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards, who made centuries in the finals of the 1975 and 1979 editions of the World Cup respectively, sure packed a wallop. But Hayden seems to be from another planet. It is him that the Sri Lankans have to be wary about because he can score big.

Sri Lanka’s best chance lies in batting first and making a competitive score. But what constitutes a competitive score? And if they have to chase, is the batting capable? Remember 105 per cent and 85 per cent?

The difference between the two finalists is 20 per cent. It is all about Sri Lanka bridging the 20 per cent. Can they?