Playing Style
Sangakkara is a left-handed top order batsman who likes to hit the ball square of the wicket on the off-side. Upon making a century, he consistently continues on past 150. While the Cut and the pull are natural strokes to him, he tends to play in the front foot. Cover drive is one of his regular scoring shots. Sangakkara averages around 57 in Test cricket. Among the current Test batsmen, his average is the next best after Jacques Kallis.In ODI cricket, he retains a modest average of 38. Sangakkara handed over his wicket-keeping duty to Prasanna Jayawardene in Tests cricket in 2009. Now he plays as a specialist batsman in Tests, and wicket keeper-batsman in other formats of the game. He is the third in the list of wicket keepers who contributed to the most numnber of dismissals in ODI cricket. With 382 dismissals, he is behind Adam Gilchrist and Mark Boucher. He is also the wicket keeper with highest number of stumpings—81—in ODI cricket.
He has also won a certain degree of admiration for his clever use of sledging and is one of few cricketers who are willing to talk about it openly. In an interview in 2004 he explained his approach to sledging:
The public perception of sledging is to go out there and abuse someone in obscene language, questioning their parentage or sexual preferences. That kind of abuse does not belong on the field of play. Sledging, as coined and pioneered by the Australians, is a measured comment designed to get a reaction out of a player. It could be any reaction: a bit of anger, a show of arrogance, a comment, a shake of the head, or a slump of the shoulders. —Kumar Sangakarra in 2004Read more about this topic: Kumar Sangakkara
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or style:
“Lovely,
this plowman’s son
with the good-looking wife
has gone so thin over you
that the woman,
though jealous,
is playing the go-between herself!”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the calibre of a bullet, teething beads.... One’s style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)