Stats: MCC captain Kumar Sangakkara scores a T20 fifty at the age of 42

Kumar Sangakkara got a chance to rewind the clock in Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) tour of Pakistan as the visitors were involved in three T20s and a One-Day game. In the first three matches, the MCC skipper Sangakkara aggregated only 38 runs. The 42-year-old is also the first non-British president of MCC. He signed off the tour with a quick-fire fifty over the Multan Sultans as the visitors won the game over the PSL team by a huge margin of 72 runs.

Kumar Sangakkara scored 52 off 35 balls with 3 fours and 3 sixes as he shared a partnership of 87 runs with Ravi Bopara for the 4th wicket. Bopara scored an unbeaten 70 off 37 balls to power MCC team to 184/4. Multan team were rolled over for only 112 in reply as only two players got into double digits. Sangakkara was 42 years and 115 days old on Wednesday which makes him the 4th oldest skipper to score a Twenty20 fifty.

Kaleem Shah holds the record for being the oldest to score a T20 fifty as a captain which he recorded during a T20I for his country Mozambique. Kaleem scored an unbeaten 72 against Malawi during the 7-match T20I series held in November last year. He was 43 years and 219 days old as on the day of that fifty. Kaleem, in this process, broke the record held by Misbah-ul-Haq as the former Pakistan captain was 42 years and 259 days old when he scored an unbeaten 61 in 2017.

Kumar Sangakkara smashed his 43rd fifty in T20 cricket

He recorded this feat while representing Islamabad United against the Lahore Qalandars. Misbah himself broke the record set by Khurram Khan who was 42 years and 156 days old who also scored an unbeaten 61 for the UAE team against the USA in 2013. Brad Hodge came close to breaking Khurram’s record in the same year as the Australian was 42 years and 4 days old when he scored 55 while leading Adelaide Strikers against the Hobart Hurricanes.

This was Sangakkara’s 43rd fifty in T20 cricket with his last half-century in this format came when he represented Multan Sultans in 2018 PSL. After the three T20s on this tour, Sangakkara’s T20 tally reads 6935 runs. He is only 65 runs short of being the first Sri Lankan with 7000 runs in Twenty20 cricket. His first-class career also halted 89 runs away from 21000 runs. Sangakkara’s List A career is also struck at 19456 as he stands 544 more runs away from being one of the four players with 20k List A runs.

(Stats as on February 19, 2020)