These two players, of course, are MS Dhoni and Kumar Sangakkara. The two couldn’t be any different from each other, and yet share striking similarities. They may have contrasting playing styles, but have a common ground in other aspects. First compare their overall batting record which include one day international, test matches and T20 international
Overall batting record
Players | All matches | Innings | NO | Runs | HS | Ave | SR | 100s | 50s |
Kumar Sangakkara | 538 | 340 | 35 | 26,634 | 169 | 43.7 | 80.2 | 23 | 91 |
MS Dhoni | 440 | 297 | 84 | 15,987 | 183* | 50.6 | 87.6 | 10 | 73 |
From this table we can see that Kumar is a very good player but we cannot say that MS is not a good batsman we have to remember that he used to come bat on no. 6 and Kumar comes on no. 3 so there are lots of differences between them. While Dhoni may have a much better average, Sangakkara has a lot more runs. Also, the fact that comes in to bat late in the game means that he ends up with more not-outs under his name than the Sri Lankan did – which, in turn, helped the former India captain have a better average.
Overall Test batting record
There is not much to say in this regard because it would be blasphemous to even attempt to make a case for Dhoni here. Kumar Sangakkara is above and beyond the former Chennai Super Kings captain and that’s nothing to be ashamed of because the Sri Lankan is among the elites when it comes to Test cricket.
Only Sir Garfield Sobers has a better average than Sangakkara among batsmen that have at least 8000 runs, only Sir Donald Bradman has more double hundreds (12) than Sangakkara and no player has more runs than him at number 3 – that's the legend of Sangakkara in Tests.
Wicketkeeping
Both of them are legendary keepers, but Sangakkara edges Dhoni in terms of catches while the latter betters the Sri Lankan in stumping skills – which is actually pretty obvious to the eye given that we have witnessed Dhoni make so many lightning-fast stumpings from behind.
Statistically, MS Dhoni makes 0.33 stumpings every innings compared to Sangakkara’s 0.28 stumpings-per-innings. However, the Sri Lankan is way ahead of the Indian when it comes to catches with 1.1 catches-per-game to Dhoni’s 0.96 catches-per-game.
So we see that MS is a better wicket keeper then Kumar, so Conclusion is very difficult to choose one among these two. While Sangakkara is a better batsman – especially in Tests – Dhoni is a quality leader whose presence would benefit the team a lot.
Take a look here at Best innings of MS Dhoni and Best Kumar Sangakkara innings
