Many achievements for ‘Sanga’ to celebrate 37th birthday

By A.C. De Silva

The great day is near and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara can well be satisfied with his performances so far in cricket. 27th October can well be a redletter day for Sangakkara who celebrates his 37th birthday on that special day, having played some glorious cricket allround the globe.

Many are the achievements of Sangakkara who blossomed out to be a fine cricketer, having learnt the game of cricket as a schoolboy at Trinity College, Kandy. At Trinity, he was not only concentrating on cricket, he was good at his school work and graduated as the senior prefect, and winner of the coveted ‘Lion’ in cricket, and Ryde Gold Medal for all round excellence. He made his debut into International Cricket at the dawn of this century in the year 2000.

In his early days Sangakkara said that he had a problem at the start scoring on both sides of the wicket, his initial movement was too for across at the start. He said that Aravinda de Silva spoke to him about the grip and Aravinda’s advice turned out to be sound.

Sangakkara explained that he was of the opinion that he learnt a lot by growing up in Kandy and playing in Asgiriya and also playing on matting wickets when he was a youngster. Playing on matting wickets when fast bowlers are in operation teaches you how to play a lot on matting wickets enables one how to deal with pace bowlers a lot on the back foot. It also teaches the batsman how to deal with steep bounce at tines. It depends upon the height of the bowler.

Sangakkara said that he was very fortunate that from a young age he had the environment to train at Trinity College and that set up a lot of groundwork.

Sanga’s 3rd Test in 2000

In 2000, Sangakkara was playing in only his third Test against South Africa at the SSC grounds and he was in the Sri Lanka as a wicket-keeper who could bat. Stepping into the side as a wicket-keeper who could also bat, he scored a soul-saving knock of 27 in 89 minutes and in the second innings he was pushed to the No. 3 spot.

He made 6 runs in 27 balls with one four.

Came the fourth Test and it was also against South Africa at Kingsmead, Dusban and Sri Lanka lost both openers Marvan Atapattu and Sanath Jayasuriya early and Sangakkara walked in at the fall of the first wicket and he was joined by Mahela Jayawardene.

The pair moved the score from 2 for 2 to 170 for 3.

The Sangakkara-Jayawardene partnership of 168 runs for the 3rd wicket had Sangakkara making 74 runs while Jayawardene fell for 98.

Sangakkara’s attacking batting style is well known around the world, here’s some scores to savour.

Sangakkara - 2nd Batsman to hit triple century and century in same match

Kumar Sangakkara became the second batsman in history to score a triple-century and a hundred in the same match as Sri Lanka pressed for victory in the second Test against Bangladesh in Chittagong.

When Sangakkara made that score of 319 in the first innings of the Test against Bangladesh, he faced 482 balls, scored 207 runs on the off side, 112 runs on the leg side, made 108, 112 runs on the leg side, made 108 singles, 17 twos and threes, 32 fours and eight-sixes.

[Top awards for Sangakkara]

*2006: Record – breaking partnership with Mahela Jayawardene, 624 vs South Africa.

*2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012: Named in ICC’s Test team of the year.

*2011, 2012 and 2013: Named in ICC’s ODI team of the year.

*2011: winner, LG ICC People’s Choice award.

*2012: Wisden Cricketer of the year, winner, ICC People’s Choice award, Winner of the Year, Winner ICC Test Player of the year, Passed 10,000 runs in Test cricket.

*2013: Winner ICC ODI Cricketer of the year.