My legs move on pitch, not dance floor: Sanath Jayasuriya (Interview)

His leg work has been perfect on the cricket pitch but how will he fare on the dance floor, wonders former Sri Lankan skipper Sanath Jayasuriya who is appearing as a contestant on the dance reality show "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa".

"I have never been on a dance field. This is the first time I am doing something like this. But it's a good experience for me," Jayasuriya told IANS in an interview here.

"First, I need to see what kind of dancing I will need to do because we have a culture, we have some kind of a system in our country. We are more conservative people," he said, adding that his people viewed him as a cricketer.

"Now when I am involved with these things (dancing), they are looking at me differently. So I need to be very careful."

He rarely shakes a leg but, for the show, the 42-year-old brawny cricketer will be required to groove to Bollywood, salsa, rumba, latin, contemporary and hip-hop beats with his choreographer. And Jayasuriya is just not sure he will be able to do complete justice.

"We go out and dance at normal parties. But it's not anything close to the dance taught here. It's totally different. My legs can move on the cricketing field, not for these dance sequences," he said.

A look at Jayasuriya's attempt to dance proves he isn't lying one bit. At the grand launch press conference of "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 4" here, the master blaster took to the dance floor on Madhuri Dixit's hit number "Tama tama loge". But he couldn't really do much apart from pointing a finger here and there.

Nevertheless, he won cheers galore - a response he hopes other viewers is expecting from all viewers.

"Like my fans support me for cricket, I hope they will support me for dance as well. The public knows I can't dance, so I hope they will give me little bit of space because I am not a dancer," said the Rajinikanth fan, who has no plans to imitate the southern superstar's style on the show.

Jayasuriya says there are no good dancers in the present Sri Lankan cricket team and that his contemporaries back home had a mixed reaction to his decision to participate in the show.

"My contemporaries are surprised because I am a person of a different kind. And when I say yes to these things, they get little surprised. They have mixed feelings. So some comments were good, some weren't good, and so I was a bit worried too," he said, adding that he is undeterred by such reactions.

"I am not nervous. I am just not a good dancer, and so it will take a little time to get into my system. I feel I am stepping into something which is not in my comfort zone. But as a human being, one should try new things. As long as it is not affecting my future career, I am fine with new things," he added.

-Radhika Bhirani