Kumar Sangakkara played a lone hand for Sri Lanka in their second innings scoring 76 runs on the fifth day of the second Test match against South Africa at Galle International Stadium on Sunday (July 20).
It was his ninth fifty-plus score in 13 innings this year. He has already scored 1036 Test runs in 2014, at an average of 86.33, the first batsman to aggregate those many runs this year. His last nine innings have produced one triple-hundred, two hundreds and five fifties.
Kumar Sangakkara has now aggregated 1000-plus runs in an year five times in his career. He became only the fourth Test batsmen to hit 1000-plus runs in a calendar year five or more times. Sachin Tendulkar achieved it six times. Australian Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting did it five times each. Including Kumar Sangakkara’s five, there have been only 12 such instances by Sri Lanka batsmen. Sanath Jayasuriya and Mahela Jayawardene are the other Sri Lanka batsmen to do it more than once.
The former Sri Lankan skipper’s best performance in a calender year was in 2006 when he scored 1242 runs at 69.00 with four hundreds and same number of fifties in 20 innings of 11 Test matches.
Mohammed Yusuf holds the record of scoring the highest number of runs in a calender year. The Pakistani batsman scored 1788 runs at 99.33 with nine hundreds and three fifties in 19 innings of 11 Test matches in 2006. His nine hundreds is also the most by a batsman in a calender year.
Australian Matthew Hayden is the only batsman who scored over 1000 runs in five successive calender years from 2001 to 2005.
OVER 1000 RUNS IN A CALENDER YEAR:
Batsman No of times Years
Sachin Tendulkar (India) 6 1997,1999,2001,2002,2008,2010
Matthew Hayden (Australia) 5 2001,2002,2003,2004,2005
Ricky Ponting (Australia) 5 2002,2003,2005,2006,2008
Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) 5 2004,2006,2009,2011,2014
