Sri Lanka’s Jayawardene and Sangakkara have done all there is to do in the game, except hold a World Cup trophy aloft.
The tight, enduring bond between Denagamage Praboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene and Kumar Chokshanada Sangakkara, forged initially when the pair were teenage opponents in Sri Lanka’s prestigious senior school competition, has yielded much.
The most productive partnership ever witnessed between two batsmen in a cricket match of first-class standing, the 624 runs the pair scored over the course of three days at Colombo’s Sinhalese Sports Club, made even more astonishing by the fact it happened in a Test match.
Not against some hapless battler nation, but against a South African attack that included Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini, Andre Nel and Nicky Boje.
Intertwined careers during which both have served as national captains, shared the field in 126 Test matches, 373 ODIs and 48 Twenty20 internationals and has earned them and their country pretty much every team and individual award the game offers.
Except for a World Cup.
Numerous business ventures including the upmarket Ministry of Crab restaurant – specialising, as its name suggests, in Sri Lankan seafood – established in the redeveloped Old Dutch Hospital amid the heart of the vibrant business, political, legal and commercial district of Colombo 1.
A heartfelt and ongoing commitment to charitable work that includes Jayawardene’s personal campaign to raise funds and provide facilities for cancer research in Sri Lanka following the premature death of his younger brother, Dhishal, from a brain tumour.
And Sangakkara’s similarly passionate involvement in raising awareness and breaking down barriers for people living with HIV and AIDS.
The man who represented Sri Lanka in tennis at junior level and forestalled his plans to complete a law degree at Colombo University because of his cricket aspirations also won widespread praise for delivering the 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s in which he bravely shone the light on shortcomings in Sri Lankan cricket governance.
But tomorrow against Australia at the SCG, 37-year-old Jayawardene will become his country’s most capped ODI player with his 446th appearance and Sangakkara, his junior by five months to the day, his 402nd in a match that will go a long way to deciding how much further this on-field union will continue.
Jayawardene will retire from all cricket when Sri Lanka’s World Cup campaign is done.
Sangakkara has also signalled his intention to draw the curtain on his limited-overs career at tournament’s end, though he has indicated he will continue in the Test format for at least a little longer.
One of his long-time Australian opponents, current captain Michael Clarke, speaks in exceptionally glowing terms of the player and the person.
“He’s certainly as good as any player I’ve played against,” Clarke said. “A wonderful batsman – his statistics show that in both Test and one-day cricket.
“He’s an absolute gentleman, a lovely, lovely guy.
“Kumar and Jacques Kallis are two guys I’ve looked up to and think if they played for different countries, they could quite easily be regarded as the best ever.
“He’s batted at No.3 for a lot of his career, in Test and one-day cricket, (which is) a really tough position. He’s scored runs all around the world against some very good bowling attacks.
“(He’s) a world-class player, (and was the) number one batter in the world for a long, long time.”
And while the 33 World Cup matches the close friends and kindred spirits have contested in company have seen Sri Lanka reach a semi-final (in 2003) and the final (in 2007 and 2011), never have they shared the winner’s podium as the Cup is held aloft.
Having watched Australia terminate two of those campaigns – in Port Elizabeth in 2003 (when Adam Gilchrist famously walked) and in Barbados four years later (when he flayed them mercilessly) – the knowledge that tomorrow’s game carries huge implications for both teams will add some extra ‘sini’ sambal.
That’s because the team that loses on Sunday will find it virtually impossible to avoid a quarter-final meeting with a rampant South Africa while the winner seems destined to come up against either the West Indies, Pakistan or Ireland in the first round of the knockout phase.
Not that either of these quietly-spoken, elegantly unhurried men is talking up the consequence of a game that is likely to draw as many Sri Lankan supporters as Australian, in no small part due to the charisma of these former schoolboy rivals turned club, provincial, national and Asia XI teammates.
“A side that has won every one of their games, maybe they don’t have to worry too much,” Sangakkara said in the same understated manner that characterises his languid left-handed strokeplay when asked this week about the stakes riding on tomorrow’s day-night match.
“But when you’re not in that situation, you might start thinking about who you’ll face in the quarter-finals and whether these wins have any bearing on what happens there.
“For us as well as Australia, it’ll be a very important game.”
Sri Lanka might go into the game with a top-four batting line-up that averages in the mid-30s – that’s years rather than runs per innings.
But Jayawardene, who at age 37 years 284 days plays junior to ageless 38-year-old opener Tillakaratne Dilshan, claims that his many younger teammates are not expecting the old timers to carry an unnecessarily large burden of responsibility and output.
Although those expectations might have changed in recent weeks.
After a fourth-ball duck in this team’s first-up loss to New Zealand in the tournament opener, Jayawardene posted an even hundred against Afghanistan but was denied a hit in Sri Lanka’s subsequent wins over Bangladesh and England.
That’s because Dilshan (161no and 44) his opening partner Lahiru Thirimanne (52 and 139no) and Sangakkara (105no and 117no) have seen to it that Sri Lanka have not surrendered more than a solitary wicket in their past two outings.
As ever, perfectly in step with Sangakkara, Jayawardene played down the influence that he and his fellow superstar will wield in the dressing room that contains more ex-skippers than a naval reunion and is now led – at least at a titular level – by allrounder Angelo Mathews.
“It’s important but I don’t think the team expects us to carry them through,” Jaywardene said when he spoke to media at the SCG yesterday.
“Most of the guys have played enough cricket, if you take Dilshan, if you take (fast bowler) Lasith (Malinga) and Angelo (Mathews) has already played over 100 games so most of our young boys have had enough one-day cricket under their belt.
“We just want to enjoy ourselves, both Kumar and myself, being our last World Cup.
“I think the whole campaign has been brilliant and everything starts when you hit that knockout stage.
“If you hold your nerve, it’s who does the simple things better and executes (their) game plans.
“It will all boil down to how you perform on that day.”
Having reached ‘that’ day in an ICC World Cup twice without reaping the reward, although most impartial judges would argue that Jayawardene’s century in the 2011 final in Mumbai deserved to be crowned with a victory, few would begrudge the legendary pair balancing that ledger at the MCG at month’s end.
It would be a fitting curtain call for two of cricket’s most accomplished performers.
Two of the game’s most revered leaders.
Two of world sport’s most exemplary citizens.
