How good is Sanga?
 

Simple enough question really.

Pros:
1. He goes big often
2. Once set, he rarely disappoints
3. Team man, and when you consider that he has been wicket keeping for a good part of his Test career it makes his achievements even more remarkable. It is probable that he would be averaging in the 60s had he not been keeping earlier in his career
4. That cover drive!
5. He loves caning Pakistan ;-)

Cons:
1. Rarely if ever completely dominates and demoralises an attack like Lara or even Ponting (on certain tracks and in certain ideal conditions) could do
2. He does have the overseas performance drop-off that is quite common with SL batters, but to a less pronounced extent. Fact is he has produced outstanding performances everywhere, but has perhaps not performed as consistently as he might have done in certain countries
3. Comparative dearth of wow innings such as Lara's 153* in Barbados vs Aus. But then again he is a different kind of player and should not be judged by those standards. Also, he is in good company as batsmen as highly-regarded as Tendulkar and Kallis also fall a little short for me in this regard.

All in all for me Sangakkara is the best around and has been since Lara retired, and will be remembered as an ATG for sure. What do you guys think?

It should be understood that I am solely concerned with Tests and anyone interested in discussing the shorter formats can take their comments to a new improved thread.

He has to be good cause he is in my All-time Draft we are playing right now. So will you vote? :D

Had be not been sawn off against Aus he was on course for one of the greatest innings of all time

The bloke's phenomenal.

Should add his record in England as well as a con.

But great player. As above, his Hobart innings one of the best you'll see.

Greatest batsman to come out of his country (which isn't great praise itbt, but still he's great).

Has a sub-par record in england, sa, wi and india so ATG i don't know about that..Has played some great good looking innings in every country though and that 192 and one of his 100 in NZ are classics..IMO Aravinda the best SL bat..

His record against us in general is pretty poor, home and away in 20 test matches averages 35.

Fun stat, when wicket keeping he averages even more against Pakistan 98.

Will go down right up there as one of the best for me. Since he got rid of the gloves he averages just shy of 70 with 23 test tons in 62 test, remarkable.

ATG for me.

Some other things to consider, he has played 62 out of 110 matches as a "pure batsmen" and averages 69.5. Which is just amazing, even if this coincides with his prime years and giving up the gloves.

Also in 15 matches as captain, he also averages 69.6. (I actually did not care much about his captaincy, but this is still nice)

While I agree with this when looking as at a whole. the times he has played well against England they have been match winning/saving innings. From memory the 3rd test in 06 (Murali 8 wickets), Kandy 07 (murali WC record) and the 3rd test last year where he saved the game.

Generally most of his big knocks got overshadowed by Murali taking 10+ wickets since it meant he had something to bowl with.

One of the better batmen of the past 20 years. Has his weak places but performs well.

Phenomenal batsman. Has grown on me. I reckon he needs a couple of signature performances to go alongwith the Hobart one. TBF to him, maybe he does already, and I'm just overlooking them.

Great first post!

On a par with KP and Bell

Yeah I think the whole "without gloves stat" as you alluded to is probably largely a coincidence, rather than him being able to turn superhuman when he isn't wicket keeping. Of course it's quite likely he would improve somewhat, but to that extent I really doubt it.

Pretty much an ATG for me though. His record in a few countries isn't that great, for sure, but it almost seems like to me it might just be "one of those things", because he is such a classy batsman. In any case, most ATG batsman have at least one country of weakness.

I agree that it can be overplayed, but I would never use the word "coincidence". It is too well attested a phenomenon for those who have graduated from wicket keeper to specialist batsman to see a significant spike in performance for Sanga's case to be any different.

The demands of keeping wicket in Tests are so mentally and physically draining that even a physically fit and mentally tough guy like Alec Stewart commented that batting as a specialist was a whole different ball game to going in physically knackered and mentally drained having spent a day and a half behind the stumps.

I'm pretty sure that a fair bit of his mid-career improvement is down to Sanga gaining more experience and tightening up his technique, but there is no doubt that that alone cannot account for the 25+ runs an innings delta between his performances as a wicket keeper/batsman and those as a specialist top order bat.

He's averaging 57 odd now, and 70 since giving up the gloves. I would say that he would easily be good for 63-65 had he not been keeping wicket earlier on.

Player - Home/Away

Jayawardene - 62/40
Samaraweera - 55/47
Sangakkara - 62/47
Dilshan - 43/39
Pietersen - 54/46
Cook - 46/54
Strauss - 41/42
Bell - 57/42
Trott - 60/43
Crowe - 50/42
Taylor - 54/32
Fleming - 33/46
Ryder - 51/34
Ponting - 58/46
Hayden - 57/41
Clarke - 58/41
Hussey - 59/41
Dravid - 51/53
Tendulkar - 56/54
Sehwag - 58/44
Gambhir - 43/47
Laxman - 51/42
Ganguly - 42/41
G.Smith - 44/54
Amla - 43/48
DeVilliers - 40/55
Kallis - 58/53
Yousuf - 65/44
Younis - 59/51
Misbah - 38/53
Ali - 55/35
Lara - 58/47
Chanderpaul - 59/43
Samuels - 22/41


Dat SA.