My Favourite Cricketer: Kumar Sangakkara by Nishant Joshi

In our continuing series "My Favourite Cricketer" we invite the best cricket writers and bloggers to explain the role one player has had on their love of the game.  This week, Nishant Joshi, the editor of the Alternative Almanack writes on Kumar Sangakkara. 

Sangakkara's achievements on the field are pretty spectacular. At the time of writing, he has scored 36 international centuries, played in one hundred Test matches, and has captained his side to a World Cup final.

But frankly, it's a testament to his sheer awesomeness that I would still worship at the temple of Kumar, even if he was a merely mediocre, Steve Smith-ish player.
 
This is because Sangakkara's suaveness is from a bygone era, where Shastri would sip cognac from sepia-toned balconies, and women would swoon at the mere sight of a sturdy forward defensive. A few decades earlier, and he would have been the Asian poster boy for Brylcreem. Every time I am privileged enough to catch a glimpse of Sangakkara's not-curly-but-just-wavy-enough-to-look-sexy hair, I am inclined to grope at the TV, in the vain hope that I might be able to run my fingers through his perfectly conditioned locks. If I ever meet him in person, so help me Sachin, I might just fake a hearty embrace, when I really just want to close my eyes and inhale a deep, lingering sniff of his hair. It probably smells of coconut and ambrosia. Maybe with a hint of lemongrass. I'll have to report back on this.

courtesy: thereversesweep.typepad.net

As a batsman, he exudes class. The male G-spot has been found, and it's on the middle of Sangakkara's bat. His cover drives are unmatched, and the way that he manages to get down on one knee and caress the ball through the covers, against even the fastest of bowlers, is the sexiest thing since Pam Grier in the 1970s. Watching him bat in tandem with Mahela Jayawardene, we are momentarily taken to cricket's zenith, a crossroads where art transcends sport.

Sangakkara's eloquence trumps England's legion of Eton fairies, which will come in handy in his inevitable post-cricket career as a lawyer - Sangakkara started an undergraduate law degree in 1998, which he has yet to complete. Perhaps we should give him a break though, it's not as if he's spent the last decade scratching his balls in his parents' basement, watching reruns of The Apprentice and living off microwaveable macaroni cheese.
 
It is this eloquence with which Sangakkara showed off to the world in July, when he was invited to deliver the prestigious Cowdrey Lecture at Lord's. (ed: watch the linked video.  It's worth it).

"My responsibility as a Sri Lankan cricketer is to further enrich this beautiful sport, to add to it and enhance it and to leave a richer legacy for other cricketers to follow. I will do that keeping paramount in my mind my Sri Lankan identity: play the game hard and fair and be a voice with which Sri Lanka can speak proudly and positively to the world. My loyalty will be to the ordinary Sri Lankan fan, their 20 million hearts beating collectively as one to our island rhythm and filled with an undying and ever-loyal love for this our game."

Sangakkara passionately related his experience as a cricketer to the development of Sri Lanka as a country. Most poignant were the chastening, cathartic moments of the 2005 tsunami, and the 2009 terror attack in Lahore, and the way he intertwined the two in the context of Sri Lanka's civil war. The man is evidently one of the most intelligent in cricket, and we can only hope that he carries his forthrightness into retirement - the game needs people who are prepared to ruffle a few feathers.

He is not without controversy, however, but for the purposes of this circlejerk, we'll gloss over that and pretend that the twice-taken toss at the 2011 World Cup Final never happened. Also, we'll try to avoid all mention of his outrageous, Gilchristian hypocrisy when it comes to the Spirit of Cricket.

Which conveniently brings me onto the next point to admire: Sangakkara's sledging is legendary. Although most of it is barely audible, unrepeatable stuff, his mental disintegration and sheer humiliation of Shaun Pollock during a 2003 World Cup knock-out game has since become a YouTube staple.  As captain of a side renowned for [search thesaurus for alternative to 'choking'], Pollock strode out to the crease with the walls closing in. 120 off 125 balls required, with five wickets down. Pollock was up shit creek, yet Sangakkara still needled him like there was no tomorrow.

Starting off in a slurred, faux-South African accent, he sledged: "Lots of pressure on the skipper here eh? The weight of all these expectations here, chaps...42 million people, all depending on Shaun."
Pollock kept quiet and ignored the taunting from behind the stumps, but one could tell there was a palpable sense of fear coursing through his veins, amplified by Sangakkara's badgering. He relished that confrontation like a lion knowing that he had his hapless prey cornered.

After his career as a batsman, I live in hope that he will become a commentator or a prominent, no-holds-barred politician. More likely, he will form a crime-fighting duo with Jayawardene, who you could totally imagine wearing a Zorro mask.

Either way, Sangakkara is sure to go down as a legend of the game.


  Nishant edits AlternativeCricket.com and  the Alternative Cricket Almanack.  You can purchase a copy of the 2011 Alternative Cricket Almanack from Amazon.

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McGinnity and Petterd ask how far is too far

After young Eagle Patrick McGinnity's suspension and fine for allegedly threatening to "rape" Ricky Petterd's mother, it's perhaps time to examine how much we value winning and the extent to which we're prepared to go for victory.

To threaten sexual relations - especially rape - to someone's relatives is off limits and the AFL has made a statement by penalising the player alleged to have made the offending remark. That McGinnity's manager David Sierakowski effectively accused Petterd of having a "thin skin" is akin to a guilty plea. It also reflects poorly on Sierakowski as it legitimises McGinnity's choice of words. Agent or no, to attack the Melbourne player for not obeying the "code of silence" is undignified and of Sierakowski we can say, to paraphrase his own words "if he had his time over again, I think he'd do it differently."

The AFL has led the sporting world in racial vilification laws and now respect for women. Unfortunately it will take incidents where players are rightly made an example of to raise public awareness about those lines not to be crossed. 

courtesy: foxsports.com.au

In Australian sport, we have a proud history of letting what happens on the field stay on the field. The same phrase could be used to hang Ricky Petterd, saying these things happen in the name of healthy competition. But surely competition which some people believe so important that they threaten to rape an opposing player's Mum cannot be healthy? By saying such things as McGinnity has been suspended for - and Adam Selwood was accused of in 2007 - competition has ceased to be healthy and become pathological.

(Even though Selwood was proven not guilty, is it coincidence that both these incidents have come from the West Coast Eagles? He certainly said something to which Des Headland could take offence. Am I theorising too much on this? Perhaps.)

As the late Terry Jenner described "Cricket in the '70s", when he began playing sledging was something as simple as an finely-placed comment about a player's technique. Even defenders of the art suggest sport has always been full of sledging, they do so in ways highlighting the differences between eras: while W.G. Grace was renowned for gamesmanship and sledging, his most famous such utterance "They're here to watch me bat, not you bowl" still refers to on-field, rather than off-field habits. Over time, cricket sledging degenerated into the celebrated insults such as possibly-apocryphal-but-probably-not "What does Brian Lara's c**k taste like?" and it's inflammatory response "Ask your wife".

Feel free to blame Patrick McGinnity. But also look for reasons behind why he chose to use such a slur: it was to gain a competitive advantage. Rather than being a player willing to do "whatever it takes" to win, this player was prepared to - accidentally or deliberately - compromise his integrity to gain a small victory over an opponent.

So what leads such a player to this position?

Since being a second-rate sporting nation during the 1970s - a funk which came to a head with a haul of one bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics - Australia has funded successful sportsmen through social, business and government means. This has produced a number of world-class athletes and some dominant sporting teams. Moreover, it's created the expectation for results. It's a simple matter of cause and effect: you stop performing, you don't get funded/sponsored.

That expectation of results is reflected in the basest terms in professional leagues across the country. Professionalism and athleticism are perhaps the most sought-after qualities in all the major football codes. It takes incredible discipline from a young age to "make it" in any sport and successful athletes generally put more pressure on themselves than any other outside force. They do so to get the best out of themselves and to help a team win.

This is not to say that Patrick McGinnity personally felt pressure to perform or to win (though it may be the case). It simply reflects that as the dollars and time invested in sport increase, those doing the spending expect some Return On Investment. The fans and coach expect their players to do their absolute best to win - and often, if that includes "mentally disintegrating" their opponents, that's OK. McGinnity undoubtedly understands that fans and a multitude of support staff have given of themselves to a cause he values (himself or his team), so wants to do his bit to repay that favour. He just miscalculated how to effect this repayment.

courtesy: in.com

It can, however, be a slippery road. As Stephanie Rice discovered last year, sport is a business: certain brands refuse to be associated with other corporate or social identities seen as damaged goods, no matter how much short term gain there may be. In time, a "just win, baby" philosophy can backfire. Perhaps the greatest Australian example of this occurred when the TAC pulled sponsorship from AFL clubs Richmond and Collingwood as a result of several traffic offences levied against players.

The league could take a lesson from the NBA, who suffered a partly self-inflicted black eye as a result of a late-80s "Bad Boys" publicity campaign built around then-champs the Detroit Pistons and their unsociable basketball. The AFL wants none of this. To ensure their brand integrity, prevent any recourse and hopefully, in the name of good common sense, they have censured Patrick McGinnity.

Competition has created great leagues for all of Australia's football codes. But as a sporting community, let's ban hackneyed journalistic phrases like "win at all costs" until we work out if that's actually what we want. Winning is great, but it isn't everything.

Handbags at ten paces

Sledging has been a part of the game of cricket since the early days of the sport. The earliest superstar, Dr. W.G. Grace was apparently a proponent of what latterly Steve Waugh's termed "mental disintegration". The term "sledging" was coined in the late 1960s in honor of Aussie fast bowler Graham Corling, who during a team barbecue made several lewd remarks and was deemed by teammates "as subtle as a sledgehammer", when then evolved into "Percy Sledge". Later "sledging" has been applied to any term of abuse in reference to a sports match and the more creative sledgers have won plaudits for their creativity and humour. Sometimes, however, talking crap backfires: just ask Glenn McGrath.

In his book "Loose Balls", former NBA star Jayson Williams says that trash-talk in basketball circles never involves family, partners or girlfriends because it's just too dangerous. There's a line in the sand that players respect and generally any discussion is limited to "Y'all can't stop me", "Who's guarding me?" and the like. Their reasons are simple - it's just not worth it because trouble always follows personal remarks.

In cricket it's different. Sledging as we now know it started off as casual comments about a player's technique or the state of the scoreboard but over the past twenty years as players think the stakes have risen, it's morphed into "say what you can to make the batsman lose concentration". All nations take part in it, probably equally. Supposed men of faith like Matthew Hayden have been serial offenders which doesn't sit well with those of us who ostensibly hold the same faith and belief systems.

But let's be honest - mostly it's just boys being boys. Or at least it should be. With England wicketkeeper Matt Prior reportedly suggesting to Peter Siddle "let's go - let's take it outside", the boundary between "gamesmanship" to "handbags at ten paces" was crossed. What Siddle did to entice the invitation was pepper the hapless 'keeper with short lifters and then dismiss him. If the Victorian tearaway stayed true to form would have also have given the Englishman a send off coloured by expletives, which if he did so was probably pretty dumb given Prior was dismissed by Siddle's good luck rather than good management.

Prior's response - essentially encouraging a fight, in which I have no doubt the bigger and stronger Siddle would triumph - has all the elegance and cleverness of a schoolyard "So's your Mum". Never the most startling riposte, but again perhaps Glenn McGrath or AFL player Adam Selwood would disagree. The Australians have attempted to regain their swagger this Test by aiming a series of barbs at the Old Enemy, who as expected have responded in kind. Perhaps, given Australia's performance in this match it has worked, but even so they have appeared not as the gum-chewing, self-confident larrikins of the Chappell, Taylor & Waugh eras but as petulant, self-aggrandising children; children on both sides of the match who Daddy Match Referee will be dealing with sternly because they look ridiculous and by extension, the game is reflected upon poorly.

It takes on even more of ludicrous stance when chief among the talkers has been Michael Clarke, whose form thus far has wobbled between horrible and below par. By involving himself but failing to back it up with runs, Clarke negates his own authority and further erodes his position as heir apparent to the Australian captaincy. As has been pointed out repeatedly, very few positions are as visible in Australia as that of the cricket captain, so for him to make himself look foolish in this manner doesn't bode well for his future leadership prospects. While Border and Waugh led the side they engaged in verbal stoushes with their opponents but almost always from a position of strength, or knowing they were going to be able to add strength to their words with runs. The simple reason Michael Jordan was the biggest trash-talker of all was that he was the best player that basketball had seen and so always backed his words with points or wins.

Clarke, again, seems to try to bully opposition simply because the big kids do it and so resembles a teen, who rather than being full of confidence is full of braggadocio and bluster. It would make his press conferences infinitely more palatable should he carry on this attitude post-match as well!

There's no excuse for getting personal in sledging Neither is there any excuse for name-calling as a) it rarely works and b) it makes the name caller look dumb. If you don't agree - and that's fine - then ask yourself this: hearing swearing is a very different thing to being sworn at, isn't it? With language and emotion like that directed at each other, there's no surprise each responds in the way they've been addressed. Of course it's coarse and disappointing and both sides obviously don't realise that they look very small doing so. It's a pity that the line never crossed in the NBA simply doesn't exist in cricket any more.