Kumar Sangakkara

Kumar Chokshanada Sangakkara (Sinhala: කුමාර් චොක්ශනාද සංගක්කාර; born 27 October 1977) is a Sri Lankan cricket commentator, cricketer and former captain of the Sri Lanka national cricket team. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the sport. Sangakkara scored 28,016 runs in international cricket across all formats in a career that spanned 15 years. At retirement, he was the second-highest run-scorer in ODI cricket and sixth-highest run scorer in Test cricket.

Kumar Sangakkara is a left-handed top-order batsman and was wicket-keeper for many years in his career. Sangakkara holds many test records, having been the fastest to various run milestones in test cricket. Sangakkara’s partnership with Mahela Jayawardene holds the current batting partnership record in Test cricket and the most wicket keeping dismissals in ODI cricket

Sangakkara won the ICC Cricketer of the Year in 2012 and featured in many awards and Word Test & ODI XIs during his career. He was selected as Leading Cricketer in the World in the 2012 and 2015 editions of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, becoming the second player to have won this award twice. Sangakkara was rated as the Greatest ODI player of all time in a public poll conducted by Cricket Australia in 2016. Sangakkara won the Man of the Match in the finals of 2014 ICC World Twenty20 and was part of the team that made the final of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, 2011 Cricket World Cup, 2009 ICC World Twenty20 and 2012 ICC World Twenty20. He won the Man of the Match award in the final of the 2014 ICC World Twenty20, where he helped the team win their first title.

In 2019, he was appointed to the role of President of the MCC, the first non-British person to the position since the club was founded in 1787. He was the youngest person and the first active international player to deliver the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture, which was widely praised by the cricketing community for its outspoken nature.