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:
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it. He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)