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Sri Lankan run-machine Kumar Sangakkara, who will draw the curtain on an illustrious career after the second Test against India starting Thursday, has won eloquent praise from the world over. But the 37-year-old left-handed stylist would be completely bowled over by Team India director Ravi Shastri’s comparison of him with Sachin Tendulkar.
While Tendulkar retired after becoming the only man to score 100 international hundreds and play 200 Tests, Sangakkara will bow out after playing in 134 matches and will finish with 38 tons unless he adds another triple figure to his record books. The former Sri Lankan captain has been one of the top batsmen in world cricket, scoring runs all over the globe and has been put in the same league as Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid.
“I saw him (Sangakkara) from his first game,” Shastri told reporters. “I was commentating on that game when he played and he is still around. He broke into the top two or three players and he never got out of that. There might have been a one year or a six-month period where his form might have dipped. But otherwise, for sheer consistency, he is unmatched,” Shastri said.
“There are very few players who fall in that list. You can bring Tendulkar in that league as the kind of player that once broke into the top two or three and then never moved out of there. Sangakkara’s record shows you that. He has got runs world over and scored double hundreds like it is a pass-time.”
Sangakkara has 11 double hundreds and needs one more to equal Donald Bradman’s record of 12 – the most by any batsman in the history of Test cricket.
Sangakkara has been in the middle of an indifferent run of form in Test matches this year – his only innings of note came against New Zealand in Wellington in January – a sparkling 203, albeit in a losing cause. But 2014 was another story where he hit his Test best of 319 against Bangladesh before following it up with two more centuries. A double hundred against Pakistan in August only added to a glowing list.
Despite his recent travails in Test cricket, Sangakkara was sensational in the ODI format – he made four successive hundreds during the World Cup Down Under earlier this year. He agreed to stay on in the Test side to see a bunch of young players through against Pakistan and India. Though he failed to fire in three of those games, Sangakkara would be eager to make a mark in his farewell Test in Colombo this week.
Irrespective of what he does with the bat at the P.Sara Oval against a quality Indian bowling attack, Sangakkara would be remembered forever as a legend who took Sri Lankan cricket to greater heights with his grace on the field and charm off it. His legacy lies far beyond the runs he has scored for his country.
“That is a legacy that he will leave behind. I think every Sri Lankan should be proud of what he has achieved not just personally but the way he has conducted himself in going round the world as an international cricketer. You can call him as one of the statesmen of the modern game,” Shastri said of the one man his young bowlers would be desperate to see off.
