Following Sri Lanka's humiliating 0-5 drubbing in the One-Day International series in South Africa, Chairman of Selectors Sanath Jayasuriya has promised the South Africans a taste of their own medicine when they tour the island for the reciprocal series.

South Africa are due to tour Sri Lanka in August 2018 and can expect the conditions to heavily favour the home team.

"Some of the wickets during the series were very difficult," Jayasuriya told Cricbuzz on Saturday (February 11). "I am not trying to give excuses and I admit we played bad cricket. We should be up for any challenge. But having said that, I must mention that I have never seen so much of grass in South Africa especially when it comes to one-day cricket.

"In ODIs, you generally get wickets that are good for batting. Port Elizabeth, for example, is the slowest wicket in South Africa, but this time I found they had left lot of grass," Jayasuriya added.

"We were exposed to tougher realities. This is going to be the future of one-day cricket. There's so much at stake with rankings and stuff and teams will prepare conditions that suits their teams. So the important thing is for us to prepare for the challenges ahead as well as we could"

Asked whether the visitors can expect a taste of their own medicine with the reciprocal series in Sri Lanka being played on rank turners, Jayasuriya said, "You can say that. If we were exposed to wickets with grass, we have to pay them back with the same coin preparing conditions suited for us."

The series whitewash helped South Africa to regain the No. 1 rank in ODI cricket from Australia.

There was criticism about Sri Lanka's preparation ahead of the series. The tourists played just one warm-up game in Potchefstroom where the conditions looked similar to home, whereas the Test series was played on green tops.

"We will be sitting down and discussing a few things. Aravinda de Silva heads our Cricket Committee and we will look into how to approach tours like South Africa, Australia and England in the future. We will come up with a proposal and implement it as soon as possible. Coach Graham Ford will give us some ideas as to how well we can prepare," Jayasuriya said.

"The Champions Trophy in England is a few months away and hopefully that can be a start. Again the conditions will be tough and we need to sit down and discuss how we can prepare. Maybe we can send the team to England earlier to help the players to adjust to conditions."

Sri Lanka's batting failed to click throughout. There were just three half-centuries in the Test series. While the batting improved towards the end of the ODI series with Upul Tharanga and Asela Gunaratne making centuries, by then the series had been already lost.

"The main problem was that our batsmen failed to make big scores, the former skipper noted. "There was hardly anything for us as far as the conditions were concerned during the Tests. I thought our bowlers did a decent job, but again consistency was lacking. In ODIs, the positives were the way Niroshan Dickwella batted while Asela Gunaratne was the find of the tour.

"I must say that towards the end of the ODI series we did improve. To posted 327 in the fourth ODI and then to score 296 in the final game was satisfying."

One of the biggest let downs during the tour was batsman Dinesh Chandimal. The Sri Lankan vice-captain was the most successful batsman in ODI cricket in 2016, but went through 12 innings in South Africa without making a half-century before being dropped for the last two games.

"Chandimal should go back to club cricket," Jayasuriya remarked. "He should work his game out. This is not the first time he has gone through a tough patch. He has to be mentally very strong. You can't think of failure all the time. Have a chat to the computer analyst, find out what's going wrong and come back stronger. These are tough times for him. You find media and social media going after you and you have to keep these things aside and concentrate on your cricket."

The former captain also praised the character of stand-in captain Upul Tharanga.

"It was tough on Upul. We missed Angelo due to injury and Chandimal, the vice-captain, was not getting any runs. So we asked Upul to lead the team and then we asked him to bat up in the order. I thought he handled things really well," he concluded.