Shot Stories

Eight short in Hobart

Following his departure from the international cricket scene, we look back eight years ago to one of Kumar Sangakkara's finest innings

September 2015

When Kumar Sangakkara walked out to bat in the second innings in Hobart, having missed the first Test due to injury, he had yet to score a Test century against Australia. Sri Lanka needed to bat two days to save the match. Sangakkara was up for the job: driving, sweeping and flicking Brett Lee behind square, and frustrating Australia's aggressive fields. He brought his hundred up with a four, and for a while on day five Sri Lanka could dream of a famous draw. They were eventually all out for 410 chasing 507.

On 192, Kumar Sangakkara pulled and missed a short ball from Stuart Clark - which hit his shoulder and helmet. Ricky Ponting took the catch at slip and it was given out. It was Clark's only wicket of the innings and only the second time in his 11-Test career (so far) that he had taken fewer than four wickets in a match.

Following the Ashes defeat in 2005, Ricky Ponting, the Australia captain, was on the warpath. With the win in Hobart, Australia were undefeated for two years (in 18 Tests). The margins of victory were huge, with only two narrow wins. Ponting was in fine batting form too, scoring ten centuries and averaging nearly 80 in this period.

It was in this match that Adam Gilchrist became the first man to hit 100 sixes in Test cricket, the last two coming off consecutive deliveries from Muttiah Muralitharan. He didn't hit any more in his final four Tests, against India, which followed this series.

Bewilderingly made 12th man for the first Test, Lasith Malinga replaced Chaminda Vaas in the second. He couldn't contain Australia's batsmen any better than Vaas did in Brisbane, but Malinga was gritty while batting - he made a 24-ball 1 in the first innings and a pacier 42 in the second, hitting sixes off Stuart Clark and then getting hit in the neck by a short delivery from Brett Lee.

At the end of the match, Rudi Koertzen apologised to Sangakkara for giving him out wrongly, which prevented the batsman from getting what would have been his seventh double-hundred. Sangakkara put his arm around Koertzen, and later said, "It was very nice of him to come and talk to me at the end of the day. It was just a mistake, and these things happen at either end."