By Idris Martin.
I decided to take my camera out of the cupboard and dust it off on Saturday and take some pictures of the Dorset Division 3 Cricket League match between Abbotsbury and Shillingstone for the KeeP Website, and I never anticipated that I would be capturing images of one of the greatest cricketers ever to walk upon this planet – it wasn’t until a gentleman with a strong northern accent approached me and asked me which team were batting as he had travelled to Dorset to see the former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara in action.
I must admit that although I love the game of cricket, I don’t follow it like I used to do in the Ian Botham and Bob Willis era, and the advent of satellite TV and the demise of free-to-air service. I had heard the name before, but I didn’t know which country he represented, and further conversation with the northerner revealed that I had been lining him up with my lens for the last half hour. I did think that he looked a bit useful the way he seemed to stroke the ball towards the boundary rope with little effort, but a cricketing superstar it never even entered my mind.
Apparently, now he has retired from full time cricket and decided to reside in Dorset and has elected to turn out for the Shillingstone.
Since retirement, he has worked as a commentator for Sky Sports and served as President of the MCC from October 2019 to September 2021. In January 2021, Sangakkara also became the coach of Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League.
Kumar Sangakkara 43, playing for Shillingstone against Abbotsbury on Saturday in a Dorset Division 3 Cricket League match.
For the record he played in 134 test matches scoring 12,400 runs, 404 One Day Internationals scoring 14,234 runs and 56 T 20 matches scoring 1382 runs.
His top test match score was 319 ODI top score 169 runs and 78 in T 20 matches.
Sangakkara played mostly as a wicket-keeper-batter and is generally regarded as one of the greatest players of this type in cricket history.[1] He batted left-handed and, although he rarely bowled, was a right-arm off spinner. In all three forms of international cricket, Sangakkara is the second-highest run-scorer, having amassed a total of 28,016 including 63 centuries and here he is playing in what must be one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the country in front of a handful of Dorset locals and a visitor from further north than Dorchester.
There are many more pictures from the match here: idrismartin.wordpress.com