As Kumar Sangakkara gets set to play his final Test, Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the monumental figures he has left in his wake.
The universally admired technique and that flamboyant finesse of the cover drive; the enormous respect that he has gleaned from followers of the game, even the most grudging ones with other allegiances … Kumar Sangakkara is set to leave the stage where he strutted around as one of the best ever, and walk off into life after cricket. And for a man as multi-faceted and versatile as he, it will not be a surprise if he settles into the groove soon enough and finds his niche with the same aplomb with which he has carried himself all his career. READ: Kumar Sangakkara: Sri Lanka’s all time great
As he prepares to enter the green pastures for the final time, he leaves in his wake plenty of delectable memories of classy innings, and equally, or more, importantly, some astounding numbers. Numbers that continue to amaze. Numbers that tell us that his place is secure among the greatest to have ever played the game.
The 12,350 runs scored at 57.71 puts the Sri Lankan maestro at number 10 on the all-time list among all those who played 20 Tests or more, just behind another left hander called Garry Sobers and ahead of men like Jack Hobbs, Clyde Walcott and Len Hutton.
However, the magic starts to mesmerise exponentially more when we look at just the matches he played as a pure batsman, when the bigger gloves did not weigh him down with additional responsibility.
We find him as the all-time No. 2, behind Don Bradman. He averages 67.39 over 86 Tests with 31 hundreds. It is no freakish statistical anomaly because of a few matches here and there. To maintain that sort of performance over 86 Tests is the hallmark of greatness of the highest order. READ: Kumar Sangakkara’s journey from Nondescripts Cricket Club to Sri Lanka national side
Best averages playing as non-wicketkeeper (pure batsman)
Player
M
Runs
Ave
100
50
Don Bradman (Aus)
52
6996
99.94
29
13
Kumar Sangakkara (SL)
86
9233
67.39
31
41
Clyde Walcott (WI)
29
2910
64.66
12
11
Graeme Pollock (SA)
23
2256
60.97
7
11
George Headley (WI)
22
2190
60.83
10
5
Herbert Sutcliffe (Eng)
54
4555
60.73
16
23
Eddie Paynter (Eng)
20
1540
59.23
4
7
Ken Barrington (Eng)
82
6806
58.67
20
35
Everton Weekes (WI)
48
4455
58.61
15
19
Wally Hammond (Eng)
85
7249
58.45
22
24
Garry Sobers (WI)
93
8032
57.78
26
30
There is always a prevalent tendency to play down the achievements of modern batsmen by citing the minnows. For the benefit of the ones to point out to the enormous boost Sangakkara’s figures got against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, here are the figures after taking these sides out of the mix.
Sangakkara has 9,998 runs at 52.89 against the major sides in Test cricket, and 7,340 at 60.16 against them as a pure non-wicketkeeping batsman.
If we consider all the batsmen in the last twenty years, looking only at their records against non-minnow Test sides, Sangakkara again ends up as the best as a pure non-wicketkeeping batsman.
Even if we take his wicketkeeping non-minnow Tests into consideration, he is still there at the very top among those who scored 3,000 or more runs during the last 20 years, with only three South Africans Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis finishing ahead of him. READ: Sunil Gavaskar: Kumar Sangakkara’s final Test will invite pressure
When Sachin Tendulkar had bowed out we had done an article on him, comparing his exact contemporaries and placing him on a percentile scale among them; and then placing this percentile score against the similar percentile scores of other batsmen across eras. The primary motivation in using this slightly more sophisticated methodthan pure averages was to eliminate inter-era variation, say between 1930s and 1990s, and still be able to place cricketers on the same scale.
We will not repeat the steps here; those interested can refer to the earlier article. However, doing the same exercise again for Sangakkara just before he bats in his final Test, we find he gets an index of 97, which places him comfortably in the top bracket, behind Bradman, and men like Javed Miandad, Everton Weekes, Kallis, Tendulkar, Ken Barrington, Graeme Pollock and Garry Sobers while being at par with Greg Chappell, just in front of Allan Border.
There can be little doubt about his absolute greatness. The quality of bowling of the era, according to a lot of arguments, is not what it used to be. However,this method eliminates the intra-era bias, and finds that Sangakkara’s relative place among his contemporaries ranks him among the greatest of any time.
The neglect
Looking at his career with a rather bigger magnifying glass, we come across some rather intriguing numbers.
In his 15-year career, Sangakkara, a batsman whose ability and performance ranks with the best of all time, never managed to play a 4-Test series, let alone a long traditional 5-Test one. This underlines the amount of misplaced and misguided disdain with which the older Test-playing nations have treated the Emerald Isle, in spite of several champion cricketers coming through their ranks during the past couple of decades. Hence, comparison with contemporaries may be a bit offset because of difference in the parameters. READ: Michael Clarke, Kumar Sangakkara— Same day, two legends walk into field for their final test
To underline my point, let me take the example of Australia. In his 15 years of international cricket, Sangakkara managed 5 Tests in that country.
Through a similar duration, Rahul Dravid played 16 Tests in Australia. In just 8 years, Andrew Strauss played 10. In 18 years, Jacques Kallis played 15.
Sangakkara did manage to play 11 Tests in England, but the conditions were hardly ideal. Not only have Sri Lanka played just a handful of Tests in the Old country in this century, three apiece in 2002, 2006 and 2011, and a pitiable two in 2014, they have always done so during the early part of the season — never playing beyond June 24 since 1998. Thus, the Lankans have always had to ply their trade in the damp and cold of the English May and early June, before the sun is strong enough to honestly declare the onset of summer. That is a period when conditions are most difficult for visiting batsmen to make runs and for the sub-continental spinners to grip the ball.
Since 1990, playing in the English May has been earmarked for the perceptibly weaker teams — Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, occasionally New Zealand, a beleaguered Pakistan, West Indies of the post-2000 era. The Sri Lankans have been treated with similar disdain even when they have demonstrated some of the most exciting cricket in the world.The Australians are obviously granted the full season, and seldom play Tests before the second half of June. South Africa and India are also welcomed with the warmth of July and August. None of India, Australia and South Africa have played Tests in England before July in this century. And during the same period, Sri Lanka have never played after June.
Hence, when the Sri Lankan cricketers are measured against the rest of the world, by having their figures in England hauled up and set beside their peers, one needs to bear in mind they have had the worst of conditions. READ: The leading run-getters in Test cricket for each team
Just how bad are the conditions? If we take the numbers for non-trivial team innings from 1990, in May the overseas teams have scored at around 25 per wicket. In June, the numbers improve to enter the 30s. By July they go up to 36 and remain in the mid-thirties through August.
While it is partly because the weaker sides are invited early on, the fact remains it is more difficult to bat in England in May and June.
The faint chink in his armour
Overall, Sangakkara’s career has been splendid, and he has excellent numbers against all the opponents.
Opponent
T
Runs
Ave
v Australia
11
878
43.90
v Bangladesh
15
1816
95.57
v England
22
1568
40.20
v India
17
1302
54.25
v New Zealand
12
887
49.27
v Pakistan
23
2911
74.64
v South Africa
17
1534
47.93
v West Indies
12
918
54.00
v Zimbabwe
5
536
89.33
Yes, he does have an extraordinary record against the minnows, but as pointed out earlier, even without the help of those 20 Tests, his numbers remain at the very top of the league.
Yet, even granting the lack of long series and the more difficult conditions he has had to play in when in England, if there is one chink in the shining Sangakkara armour it is his record in touring, especially in South Africa.
If we look at the period he played in, from July 2000 to August 2015, the most difficult countries to get runs for visiting batsmen have been South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia.
The most treacherous countries to tour:
All touring batsmen during Sangakkara’s career (2000-2015)
Country
Total Tests
Ave
South Africa
75
25.90
Sri Lanka
76
26.62
Australia
86
27.23
England
105
28.97
New Zealand
58
30.89
India
67
31.19
West Indies
71
32.77
Pakistan
29
33.27
Zimbabwe
30
35.64
Bangladesh
51
44.97
Of these, we obviously have to set aside Sri Lanka, where Sangakkara was the undisputed home-grown hero, ruling over the pitches as a lord would hold sway over his fiefdom.
However, when we turn to South Africa, we find Sangakkara managing 572 runs from 8 Tests at a rather disappointing 35.75 per innings. Duringthe same period in that country, Brian Lara has 531 runs at 66.37, Tendulkar 738 at 55.23, Adam Gilchrist 523 at 65.37, Andrew Strauss 826 at 51.62. Among those who scored over 500 runs, Sangakkara ends up at a lowly number 15.
Sangakkara in different countries
Country
Tests
Runs
Ave
Australia
5
543
60.33
Bangladesh
6
783
78.30
England
11
862
41.04
India
6
365
36.50
New Zealand
6
549
61.00
Pakistan
5
695
86.87
South Africa
8
572
35.75
Sri Lanka
75
6780
61.08
U.A.E.
6
682
62.00
West Indies
4
238
34.00
Zimbabwe
2
281
140.50
It is in Australia, with the limited opportunity of 5 Tests, that he demonstrated class across time with five fifties and a huge hundred in 10 innings. It leads one to wonder what spectacular duels one might have witnessed if Sri Lanka had been called more often and on full tours Down Under.
In England, as we discussed, he got a raw deal with the rest of the Lankan team. The Blighty, after Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia, was the next most difficult country to get runs in. In that land the master southpaw managed a decent 41.04, but still ends up at number 14 during the period among those who scored more than 500 runs.
While his rather ordinary figures in West Indies can be attributed to anomalies of small sample, the other surprise is in India where he had a torrid time before setting things somewhat right with a big 137 in his final innings in that land.
So, while Sangakkara mastered every bowling in his own country and made runs in most of the lands, there are some gaps in his track record while travelling to foreign lands.
Yet, in overall analysis, he does end up as one of the best of all time, certainly the greatest produced so far by Sri Lanka. And all these numbers will continue to vouch for it for as long as the game of cricket continues to be played.
(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)
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