October 27 + Left Hander = Champion Cricketer

#3 Kumara Sangakkara

Kumara Sangakkara is known as one of the best wicket-keeper batsmen to play the game of Cricket and also considered as the greatest of all time. The left-handed batsman made his debut into international cricket at the age of 22 in the year of 2000.

He announced his arrival in the Triangular ODI series, where he scored a match-winning 85 runs against South Africa, which was his second ODI game. He was awarded Man of the Match for his contribution with the bat.

His first break in Test cricket was against India at home, where he scored his first test hundred in the 1st test against India that helped his team to win the game. Sri Lanka went on to win the 3 match Test series against India 2-1.

Kumara Sangakkara scored a double hundred against Pakistan in the following year in 2002. His knock of 230 helped Sri Lanka win the Test match but also helped them win the Asian Test Championship.

Kumara Sangakkara scored a mammoth 270 against Zimbabwe in the year of 2004, he along with Marvan Attapattu stitched together a partnership of 438 for the second wicket, which is a 4th highest partnership in the world.

Kumara Sangakkara was appointed as vice-captain of the Sri Lankan team in the year of 2006. He along with Mahela Jayawardene stitched together a monumental 624 run partnership in a test match against South Africa at home. In this test match, he scored 287 runs, which is his career highest till date.

He was appointed as Captain in the year of 2009 after Mahela Jayawardene stepped down from the position. Under Kumar’s captaincy, Sri Lanka managed to reach the finals of both 2009 T20I World cup and 2011 50 over World cup. After the 50 over World cup in 2011, Kumara Sangakkara stepped down from captaincy and the mantle was handed over to Dilshan.

The left-hander continued his good form post captaincy and has been instrumental in Sri Lanka’s Asia Cup triumph in 2014 in Bangladesh as well as the T20I World Cup win in the same year. Kumara Sangakkara retired from T20I’s post the World Cup triumph.

He continued his run in ODI’s and Test Cricket he notched up 10,000 runs in both Test and ODI cricket. Following are the records and achievements of Kumara Sangakkara:

1. Second highest run-scorer in ODI’s and 6th highest in Test Cricket
2. Fastest to 8000, 9000, 11000 and 12000 runs in Test cricket
3. ICC cricketer of the year in 2012, ODI Cricketer of the year in 2011 and 2013
4. Most Wicket-keeper dismissals surpassing Adam Gilchrist

Kumara Sangakkara retired from ODI cricket in the 2015 ICC Cricket World cup after his team crashed out in the quarter-finals against South Africa. However, Kumar had a fruitful tournament as he scored 4 consecutive 100’s and became the 1st batsman to do so in the history of World Cup.

He retired from Test cricket in the same year against India at home. In his final appearance, he made 32 and 18 and was well greeted by the Indian Team and the crowd at P Sara Oval.

Kumar was also part of Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils in IPL and participated in various leagues across the leagues and made significant contributions to his team. Currently, he is part of commentary teams on TV.