This week Cricket Australia’s marketing arm put out an interview of former great Kumar Sangakkara talking on his fabulous 192 in Hobart during Sri Lanka’s tour of Australia in 2007. Had Cricket Australia been more conscious and given the great man opportunities to perform in their shores more often, Sanga would have accomplished far greater things.
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Durban is hot. Steaming hot. The conditions are very similar..
Cricket Australia must be ashamed that one of the true greats of the sport played just five Test matches down under. Of those five Tests, three were at far off places like Cairns, Darwin and Hobart. Sanga never played a Test match at Sydney Cricket Ground, one of cricket’s most iconic venues. Not only Sanga, even other Sri Lankan greats like Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva never played at SCG. Something they regret in private.
Sanga’s Hobart knock was a fine effort as it was scored on the fourth innings on a crumbling wicket. Had he not been wrongly given out by umpire Rudi Koertzen, Sanga would have gone on to complete a memorable double hundred. The Sri Lankan vice-captain was just eight runs short of a double-century when he was struck on the shoulder by a bouncer from paceman Stuart Clark and the ball ricocheted off his helmet to the second slip. Saint Adam Gilchrist appealed for a catch and the batsman was ruled out. Later, the South African umpire apologized to Sanga.
Incidentally, Sanga had missed the first Test at the Gabba due to a hamstring injury. But in the next Test at the Tasmanian capital, he was fabulous, scoring 57 in the first innings and 192 in the second.
You rank your efforts against the Aussies amongst your best for the simple reason that you don’t get any freebies against them. During our interactions, when asked about his best knock in Test cricket, Sanga has not given a definite answer. When he tends to beat around the bush, you actually tend to think that whether he rates the 98 he made against South Africa at Centurion on his first ever cricket tour as his best effort. That 98 was as good as any of his 38 Test hundreds. There again he was wrongly given out to Makaya Ntini.
But why the Hobart effort wasn’t his best is because of a few reasons. Firstly, it was in a losing cause. Then, apart from Mitchell Johnson and Brett Lee, the rest of the bowling comprising Stuart Clark, Stuart MacGill and Michael Clarke wasn’t the greatest Australian attacks in recent times.
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Every time Sri Lanka has won overseas, Sanga has come up with match-winning contributions and the most talked efforts are the hundreds he scored in Durban (2011) and Wellington (2007). People tend to give little value to his maiden double hundred scored in 2002 in Lahore in the finals of the now defunct Asian Test Championship.
Sanga’s effort helped Sri Lanka beat Pakistan in the final in Lahore to win the Asian Test Championship. There are few other reasons as well to rate that knock as his greatest.
Firstly, that was during a time when the young Kumar Sangakkara was trying to find his feet in international cricket having edged out the popular Rumesh Kaluwitharana as the wicketkeeper-batsman. This knock cemented his place in the side. Secondly, it was a greenish track. Also, apart from Sangakkara, no other batsmen scored a hundred and there were only four half-centuries in the game that lasted the distance of full five days.
You’ve got to also look at Pakistan’s attack. The new ball was shared by Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akthar. Mohammad Shami was first change followed by Abdur Razzaq and that type of attack on a track where it does a bit was tough to handle. Sanga came up with a masterclass, batting for over eight hours. In the end, his knock made the difference, like it did on so many other occasions.
When Sri Lanka bowled Pakistan out for 234 runs on the opening day, there were still 21 overs remaining for stumps. Sanga had kept wickets the whole day and would have prayed for the openers to see through the final session in fading light. Alas! Marvan Atapattu was dismissed by Waqar for a first ball duck and in walked Sanga to face the second ball of the innings. He seized the opportunity and made it count.
It was only Sangakkara’s 20th Test match. He walked in to bat as a 24-year-old promising batsman. After the eight-hour marathon, there was little doubt that we were seeing a Test captain in the waiting. Kudos to the likes of captain Sanath Jayasuriya and Head Coach Dave Whatmore for persevering with the talent they had identified. After all, they had taken a very unpopular decision to drop Kalu.
It is the appetite that Sanga showcased earlier on in his career that most young players lack these days. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
