This Charming Man

Michael Henderson

There was a special guest at the annual Saints and Sinners lunch at the Savoy. Largely unobserved (there were more than 300 people crammed into one of the rooms ‘below deck’) was Kumar Sangakkara, who was sharing a table with Antony Wreford. It was Wreford’s last act as president of MCC to hand on the baton to the Sri Lankan, and it was a wise decision. It’s always worth a cheer when a distinguished player slips into that seat.

Sangakkara upped sticks from his island home to fulfil the role, and has stayed in England. His children are at Bryanston, so he is a Dorset man, and his presence adds value to that handsome county. He is a trim 46. Hand him a bat, and you fancy he would still be capable of taking a century off a county attack, and every run would be finely wrought. What a magnificent player he was.

When he joined the Lankan Test team in 2000 he had quite a lot to say for himself. During that fractious series with England in the spring of 2001 he was not the team’s jabberer-in-chief - that was Russel ‘one L’ Arnold, crouching at short leg - but he wasn’t far behind. Chirp, chirp, he went, all day long.

England lost the first Test, at Galle, where the umpiring was woeful. They drew level in an ill-tempered match at Kandy, where it was Sanath Jayasuriya’s turn to get a shocker, and then won in Colombo, where Graham Thorpe made one of his best centuries. It was an eventful contest, to say the least, and Sangakkara made an indelible mark as batsman and keeper of the wickets.

In his subsequent career he achieved greatness: 134 Test matches, 12,400 runs, and 38 centuries. An average of 57 places him statistically alongside Garfield Sobers, among the greatest of the great, though averages will never tell the whole tale. Cricket is an aesthetic game. Facts are useful, but the manner in which batsmen make their runs should also be taken into account.

Who remembers a run that Jacques Kallis scored? Not many. But nobody who saw Sangakkara will forget him. He belongs in the holy trinity of Lankan batsmen, with Mahela Jayawardene and Aravinda Da Silva. My word, they were charmers. Productive charmers, too. These men were not ornamental. Their runs changed matches, and raised the profile of their nation’s cricket.

Where does he stand in the pantheon of left handers? Very high indeed. Sobers was clearly the greatest. There can be no argument about that. He was the finest cricketer ever to don flannels, and will remain so until salmon swim in the street.

There must also be room at the top table for Graeme Pollock, whose Test career was cut short by the ban on South Africa. Brian Lara can join them, and it’s hard to exclude Clive Lloyd, whose thrilling strokeplay (and athletic fielding at cover point) made him a shining star in the Seventies.

From the Golden Age Frank Woolley raises a hand through a Kentish mist and asks ‘what about me?’ Those who saw him (and Neville Cardus seemed to watch him every week) would certainly want him on the team. Australians from the next generation would have Arthur Morris opening the innings, with Neil Harvey entering on the fall on the second wicket. Ken Tynan, the cricket-loving drama critic, said he would rather watch Harvey make 20 ‘than Winston Place of Lancashire make a century’.

Who would you rather have – Allan Border, or David Gower? They played their cricket at the same time, and made their runs in very different ways. One answer, perhaps, is to say Gower would make the day beautiful, if he was in the mood, and Border would do more to help his team win the match. It takes all sorts. I’m a Gower man.

Similarly, would you go for Matthew Hayden, or Saeed Anwar? Hayden had a remarkable career at the top of the order as Australia ruled the world, but he did not delight. There was something joyless about his cricket, and joy waters the roses. Give me Anwar any day, over Hayden, or Chris Gayle, or any of the other Frank Gehrys of the crease, though we’ll take Adam Gilchrist. What a formidable walloper he was.

Roy Fredericks tends to be forgotten now. The Guyanese played initially in the shadow of Sobers and Rohan Kanhai, before Lloyd and Vivian Richards led the Caribbean charge through the Seventies. But he was a jolly good opening batsman, who took on the fast bowlers at their freshest.

Then there is Alistair Cook, or ‘Mr Punch’, as he might soon be known. The fresh-faced farmer’s boy was no innocent. To make so many runs with four strokes was quite a feat! A spot in the Charmers’ XI would be beyond him, but look in the book and his records are there for all to see.

There are those who spoke highly of Martin Donnelly, the New Zealander. Charles Burgess Fry was one of them, and his was a vote worth having.

It’s great fun, and also impossible to satisfy every whim. As they say, only the auctioneer is equally interested in all schools of art. From what I have read I would nominate the top five, chronologically, as: Harvey, Sobers, Pollock, Lara, Sangakkara. But as the man with the wooden leg told the surgeon, it’s a matter of opinion.