Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team against taking a depleted Pakistan side lightly in Tuesday's Champions Trophy Group B tie. Pakistan strike bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif were withdrawn from the tournament on Monday after the pair returned positive tests for the steroid nandrolone in pre-tournament tests conducted at home.
"We won't take Pakistan lightly," Jayawardene told reporters on Monday. "We have realised that, from playing Pakistan a few times in the past. We are taking the match as we did last night."
Pakistan cricket is still reeling from a ball-tampering fiasco which caused the team to forfeit the recent fourth test against England at The Oval, controversy over the captaincy and the resignation of board chairman Shaharyar Khan. However, even without the injured Shoaib, Pakistan were still strong enough to defeat hosts Sri Lanka in the test and one-day series in March-April.
Jayawardene said his team would miss the challenge of facing Shoaib, one of the most colourful characters in cricket and rated the sport's fastest bowler along with Australia's Brett Lee.
The incident is the biggest to hit cricket since Australia's Shane Warne was withdrawn prior to the 2003 World Cup in South Africa after testing positive for a diuretic and subsequently banned for one year. "We had looked forward to playing against Shoaib, but he was injured," he said. "We wanted to see how we would do against him." Coach Tom Moody said his team were not tested for drugs in Sri Lanka but he remained confident they would have no problems.