Kumar ‘Un’-Sangakkara: The understudy for legends

Kumar Sangakkara is a name that is familiar to all. After making his international

al debut in 2000, this Sri-Lankan southpaw has not looked back since and has accumulated a lot of world records to his name during the course of his on-going career. When he scored a mammoth 319 against Bangladesh in the recently concluded Test, he became the fastest batsman to reach 11 thousand Test runs in just 122 matches. But on a larger frame when we talk about the all-time greats of cricket, we tend to place Sangakkara below the others even though the numbers are in his favor. We can say that he is an understudy for legends in the world of cricket.

What is an understudy?

In a theatre an understudy is a person who learns another’s role in order to be able to act at short notice in their absence. Basically he is a person who works as hard as the lead in the play only to act on stage when the stars are in his favor and the lead backs out. The same can be said for Kumar Sangakkara, if the cricket world were a stage and all the players were there actors, who would you give the lead role to?

Obviously to the legends of the game, namely Sachin Tendulkar, Sir Donald Bradman, Brian Lara, Sir Vivian Richards etc. Would you allow Sangakkara the main role despite having the players we rate above him in the backstage?

No, this corroborates the point I stated above, Kumar Sangakkara would only be brought on the stage during the absence of the other greats in world cricket as he is the understudy for legends.

Forget giving him a lead role at the world stage, even when we talk about legendary batsmen from Sri Lanka we never take Sangakkara’s name without Jayawardene’s and the equally glorious career of Mahela Jayawardene is another reason behind Sangakkara being an unsung hero of world cricket. Try asking any cricket aficionado to choose between these two and you will put him in a predicament.

There is no doubt in my mind about Jayawardene’s achievements being any lesser than that of Sangakkara’s, in fact selecting one out of the two is a very big quandary as mentioned before and since I have chosen Sangakkara here, let’s just talk about the left-handed wicket-keeper.

The USP of Sangakkara is his sound technique and elegance. Even an unconventional scoop coming out of Sanga’s bat seems like coming straight from the text book. For the 14 years that he has been in the team, Sri Lanka has seen more ups than downs. Though they have not won any of the major tournaments except sharing the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with India, Sri Lanka have reached the finals of ICC World Cup twice in 2007 and 2011. They have also featured in the finals of ICC World T20 twice in 2009 and 2012. All these achievements had Sangakkara in them, playing a major role.

Also a wicket keeper, Sangakkara has been a golden fish in the IPL pond. More than the commercial success in the IPL, he averages a whopping 58.07 in 122 tests and maintaining an average as healthy as that requires a lot of skill, consistency and hard work. Sangakkara over the years have exuded all these qualities and the people around the world have appreciated him for that.

The 36 year old deserves a place among the legends of the game and more than that deserves a place where he can exist independently in the memory of people, currently the thought of Sangakkara in our minds is followed by the equal greatness of Jayawardene. He has been an uncelebrated hero for the world of cricket which compelled me to add the ‘un’ to his name in the title and I hope that over the few more years that he will contribute to cricket, he will be able to remove this prefix from his name and the world will assign him the lead role with arms wide open.