By Paresh Soni BBC Sport in Grenada

Jayawardene was Sri Lanka's top scorer in their innings of 226

Captain Mahela Jayawardene denied Sri Lanka had shown a lack of respect for the World Cup after resting key bowlers for Monday's game against Australia.

The decision to leave out Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan backfired as they were beaten by seven wickets.

Jayawardene said they could not afford the pair to "burn out" before the key matches coming up.

"When we took the decision we knew it would be a tough game but these guys have been playing a lot of cricket."

Jayawardene said Muralitharan and Vaas had suffered various niggles and they could not afford either to be out of action with a semi-final and, hopefully, a final coming up, even though paceman Lasith Malinga was already on the sidelines because of an ankle problem.

"They have had injury problems for the last 6-12 months and we've been giving them breaks - we have to manage these players."

He continued: "We have 15 guys we brought along to play in this tournament, all quality players who have been playing for us for the last 12 months.

"We never devalued the game - we just couldn't sustain another injury like what happened to Lasith [Malinga].

"These guys are key players and going in to the business end of the tournament, if one of these guys was not fit we would look back and think why didn't we take that decision [to give them a rest]."

Reflecting on the team's performance against Australia, he said: "We fought really well but we made a lot of mistakes, losing five wickets for 17 runs in that middle period when we were looking to accelerate.

"If you make mistakes against Australia, they will punish you."

Jayawardene shared a stand of 140 with Chamara Silva, but their eventual total of 226 all out was not enough to seriously test Australia's batsmen.

"You have to try to bat through the innings, but we couldn't do that. Around 250 would have been an ideal score but they batted really well and we didn't bowl particularly well so it was disappointing," he said.

"Hopefully we can get the basics right and come back strongly against Ireland."