SRI Lanka's former cricket captain will be staying on in Somerset to play the remaining matches in this season's Royal London One-Day Club.

Somerset County Cricket Club said they were delighted to announce that Mahela Jayawardene would be staying on.

Originally, the Sri Lankan top order batsman had only signed for the NatWest T20 Blast campaign.

The 39-year-old has an impressive record in 50 over cricket and during his career has appeared in 541 List A matches in which he has scored over 15,000 runs at an average of 33.43 with a best of 163 not out.

Mahela said: “This is really good news for me and I am very pleased to be staying with Somerset to play in the Royal London One-Day Cup this season. I am enjoying playing for the county and living here in Taunton.

“I will be doing my very best to try to make sure that Somerset reach the next stage of the competition and get to the final at Lord’s.”

Somerset director of cricket Matt Maynard said: “Mahela is a high class performer so when he became available for the rest of our Royal London One-Day Cup campaign we signed him without any hesitation.

“Hopefully the addition of him to our batting line up will enable us to go all the way in the competition and of course it also means that Somerset fans will get more opportunities to see Mahela in action this season.”