Kumar Sangakkara

1) Kumar Sangakkara was born to Kumari Surangana and Kshema sangakkara in Matale and grew up in Kandy.
2) Kumar Sangakkara met his wife Yehali when he was about 16-17 and has been with her for well over 20 years now. Without a doubt, it’s been the bestpartnership of his life. The couple has twins, a girl and a boy: Swyree and Kavith.
3) Kumar Sangakkara has done his schooling at Trinity College, an elite private boys’ school situated in Kandy. He was the Head Boy of school and was also awarded the highest honour of Trinity College, the Ryde Gold Medal, for the best all-round student.
4) Sangakkara later pursued a degree in the Arts stream in 1996 and enrolled for a degree in Law at the University of Colombo, but was unable to finish it due to his cricket commitments.
5) Kumar Sangakkara played a number of sports like badminton, tennis, swimming, table tennis and cricket during his school days and even represented his country in badminton, tennis and cricket at his younger age.
6) Despite being good at so many sports, Sangakkara started to look at cricket as a serious option after a timely advice from the then principal of his college, Leonard de Alwis, who advised his mother to encourage Sangakkara to concentrate on cricket.
7) Kumar Sangakkara made his international debut in an ODI match against Pakistan at Galle in 2001
8) The 37-year-old made his Test debut against South Africa at Galle in 2001.
9) Sangakkara has scored 38 Test centuries, which puts him at fourth position behind Ricky Ponting (41), Jacques Kallis (45) and Sachin Tendulkar (51).
10) Sangakkara along with Mahela Jayawardene still owns the record for the highest partnership in Tests (624) for any wicket.
11) Kumar Sangakkara became the youngest person to deliver the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s. He was the first active international player to deliver that lecture, which was widely praised by the cricketing community for its outspoken nature.
12) Kumar Sangakkara won three ICC awards in 2012 – Cricketer of the Year, Test Cricketer of the Year and People’s Choice award.
13) In 2012, he became the second Sri Lankan after Mahela Jayawardene to get to the 10,000-run mark in Tests. He became the joint-fastest batsman to get to the landmark.
14) Kumar Sangakkara's highest score in Test is 319, which he scored against Bangladesh at Chittagong in 2014.
15) Kumar Sangakkara scored 11 Test double centuries in his fabulous career, just one behind Don Bradman's record of 12 double tons.
16) Kumar Sangakkara was named the ICC ODI player of the year in 2013.
17) Kumar Sangakkara is the first batsman to score four centuries on the trot in ODIs.
18) As a specialist batsman only Don Bradman has a higher average than him.
19) In the list of batsmen who have scored highest runs in Tests, Sanga lies at number five with 12350 runs, behind Rahul Dravid (13288), Jacques Kallis (13289), Ricky Ponting (13378) and Sachin Tendulkar (15921).
20) With 501 victims behind the wicket, he surpassed Adam Gilchrist’s 472 ODI dismissals by quite a margin.
21) Kumar Sangakkara is the second highest run scorer in ODI matches after Sachin Tendulkar.
22) Kumar Sanggakkara has played cricket from the age of 7 years, when he joined Sunil Fernando’s private coaching classes. Sunil also used to coach Muttiah Muralitharan during the after school classes.
23) Kumar Sangakkara is the first batsman to score four back-to-back centuries in an ICC World Cup.