Sangakkara falls short of equalling record century run
Kumar Sangakkara fell 16 runs short of making County Championship history as Surrey drew with Essex in Division One yesterday.
The Sri Lankan was out for 84 as he chased a record-equalling sixth consecutive championship century – and his 100th hundred across all forms of the game. He patted the ball anticlimactically back to Essex’s part-time spinner, Tom Westley. Sangakkara now has 853 runs in red-ball cricket this season at an average of just over 106, with his last six innings bringing scores of 136 against Lancashire, 105 against Warwickshire, 114 and 120 against Middlesex and 200 and 84 here.
There had been a doubt at one stage whether Sangakkara would even get the chance to the challenge the record. He was stranded
on 79 not out when the umpires took the players off for bad light and they did not return for 75 minutes. When the captains shook hands at 4.51pm, Surrey were 246 runs ahead in their second innings with one wicket still to fall.
The draw maintained Essex’s one-point advantage over Surrey at the top. It looked at one point as if Jamie Porter was going to set up Essex’s third win of the season when he claimed five wickets in 27 balls to post career-best match figures of nine for 160. Before then, Simon Harmer had been the epitome of tight bowling – dismissing Rory Burns for 50 via a low return catch for figures of one for 11 from his first 10 overs – before Sangakkara took a liking to him.
Stand-in captain Burns and Scott Borthwick had pieced together a second-wicket partnership of 63 in 26 overs, with the former reaching his half-century from 107 balls.
But Borthwick’s departure just
before lunch precipitated a clatter of wickets, all to Porter. A tickle down the leg side accounted for Borthwick and, though Sangakkara survived Harmer’s lbw appeal, Dom Sibley prodded at Porter’s first ball after the break and provided Foster with a tumbling catch to his right. It was 159 for five in Porter’s next over when Ben Foakes chipped a tame catch to Ravi Bopara at midwicket.
Two runs later and Sam Curran was on his way, lbw to a slower ball from Porter – whose fifth wicket was not long in coming as Tom Curran was taken one-handed low to his right by Foster. But, as he did in the first innings with 49 at No 9, Stuart Meaker built a key partnership with Sangakkara.
Sangakkara hit Harmer for two scorching drives through the off side to move effortlessly into the seventies but when Meaker ducked into a short-pitched delivery from Wagner that thudded into his jaw, the umpires decided the light was too bad to continue.
Meaker went to the ninth ball after the resumption, bowled around his legs by Harmer. Two wickets were left, Sangakkara was on 80 and Essex had Westley on at the other end – and it was the part-time bowler who ended the fairy tale.