Proud cricketing son of the Central hills Kumar Chokshanada Sangakkara, former Sri Lanka skipper has mae the city of Kandy and Sri Lanka proud, as he has been appointed as the new chairman of the Maryleborne Cricket Club (MCC) world cricket committee, he has made the city of Kandy and Sri Lanka proud.
Sanga, as he is fondly called, was born to Kumari Surangana and Swarnakumara Sangakkara on October 27, 1977 in Matale. Later his parents settled in Kandy where he grew up and received his primary and secondary education at Trinity College. He has two sisters, Thushari and Saranga, and an elder brother Vemindra, all who have had national level achievements. Sanga too started playing a number of sports – badminton, tennis, swimming, table tennis and cricket at junior school and was able to win national colours in badminton and tennis at a young age. But it was the then principal of Trinity College Col. Leonard de Alwis, who saw the potential in the aspiring Sanga, and advised his mother to encourage him to concentrate more on cricket.
He represented his school’s under-13 cricket team under coach Upananda Jayasundera and then it was Berty Wijesinghe who coached Sanga in the under-15, under-17 and first XI squads that eventually put him on the path to stardom. Sanga was awarded the Trinity Lion, the most prestigious and exalted award a Trinity sportsman can acquire for his exceptional batting and wicket-keeping skills in the 1996 season. In that same year in the big match the late ME Marikar predicted that a future Sri Lanka cap was in the making.
Sanga was 19 years when he was selected to play for the Sri Lanka A team on a tour of South Africa in 1998-99. But it was not until an unbeaten knock of 156 against Zimbabwe A at a home one-day match that he was able to secure a place in the Sri Lanka senior team in 1999. Before that Sangakkara led Trinity College in 1966 and in the 81st big match battle against St. Anthony’s College the game ended in a draw after which the one-day clash went in favor of the Antonians led by Tharaka Gunaratne. Following his father’s footsteps, he took up Law and entered the Law Faculty of the University of Colombo but was unable to finish his degree due to a workload of cricket.
He made Sri Lanka blush when he delivered the 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Colin Cowdrey Lecture which gained worldwide attention. It was a masterpiece that also did not go down too well with Sri Lankan officials whom he accused of shady behind-the-scene workings. Sanga eventually became the youngest and the first active international player to deliver that lecture which was widely praised by the cricketing community in Sri Lanka.
He was named Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in 2011 and 2015 and is one of only two players to have won the award twice along with Indian opener Virender Sehwag who won the prize in 2008 and 2009.
The post Sanga makes country proud by becoming MCC World Cricket Committee head appeared first on DailyNews.