In a sport that continues to include off field qualities to reckon the greatness of a player, Sangakkara qualifies easily.
It was strange watching Sri Lanka play a Test match this week without either Mahela Jayawardene or Kumar Sangakkara in the team. Not quite Hamlet without the prince, but almost. Generational changes occur in sport faster than in other spheres of human activity. We are prepared for it, yet funnily enough, surprised too. Especially in the context of cricket in the subcontinent, where few top players have got their timing right. Most quit when they have to, not when they ought to.
Sunil Gavaskar got it right, Kapil Dev didn’t, bowling on in search of the wicket that would take him past Richard Hadlee’s then world record. Sourav Ganguly got it right, Sachin Tendulkar didn’t, batting on into his 200th Test, a survivor rather than a game-changer. Anil Kumble got it right, Wasim Akram didn’t.
Temptations
Sangakkara had a host of temptations before him: a chance to finish as the second highest run-getter in Tests, make 40 centuries and equal Don Bradman’s record of 12 double centuries. If I have to hang on just for the sake of records, he suggested, there is something pathetic about that. It is a thought that long-serving players from this part of the world who hang on beyond their sell-by date should paste onto their cricket bags.
Muttiah Muralitharan had expressed similar sentiments. Asked if he would like to extend his career in search of his 800th wicket, he is reported to have said before his final Test, with his tally at 792. “If I can’t claim eight wickets in a Test, I should be retiring anyway.”
But Sangakkara isn’t done yet. He has two more Tests coming up against India, and unlike many before him who had to be gently pushed when they showed a marked reluctance to jump, his recent record has been amazing. Last year he made 2868 runs in all forms of the game, 1431 in Tests at an average of 72. This year there was the run of four centuries at the World Cup.
Sangakkara turns 38 in October (he is exactly five months younger than Jayawardene); Sri Lanka cricket’s ‘Sangawardene era’ would have come to an end by then. It will be acknowledged as an era of guts and glory, of class and rare self-awareness. The two friends, appropriately enough, hold the highest partnership record in Tests, a massive 624 for the third wicket against South Africa. Sangakkara made 287.
In a sport that continues to include off field qualities to reckon the greatness of a player, Sangakkara qualifies easily. A Test match average (58) that is the highest among those who have made over 10,000 runs ensures the figures are on his side.
Dignified leader
There is too the dignity and leadership he has displayed throughout, from delivering the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ lecture at Lord’s to putting forth his philosophy as the national captain. “Not only must we win,” he said before the 2011 World Cup, but we must win while playing like Sri Lanka.”
Ken Barrington, for long the quintessential English cricketer, of whom it was said that when he went out to bat he seemed to carry the Union Jack with him, never said anything like that. Nor did Steve Waugh or Sourav Ganguly or Graeme Smith when they embodied their country’s cricket.
“He spoke the truth,” wrote Jayawardene about his Lord’s lecture where Sangakkara took his cricket board to task, “when it might have been more convenient personally to mouth platitudes.”
Sangakkara seldom mouthed platitudes. Certainly not from behind the stumps from where he could sledge with the best of them. In front of the stumps, he usually let his bat do the talking, and even if it lacked the poetry of a David Gower conversation, there were still new usages that startled the onlookers. There was the measured cover drive, for one; the vicious pull for another. The suave, urbane batsman could be a street fighter when the mood took him.
“I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan,” was how Sangakkara ended his Lord’s speech.
Clearly he has a bigger role to play after he hangs up his boots.
