Brian Lara
Kumar Sangakkara
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Kumar Sangakkara leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Brian Lara at #8 and Kumar Sangakkara at #11.
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The case for Brian Lara
Brian Lara was cricket's supreme record-breaker and its most thrilling big-innings player. The left-hander holds the highest individual Test score, 400 not out against England in 2004, and the highest first-class score, 501 not out for Warwickshire in 1994, the only man to reclaim the Test record after losing it. He scored 11,953 Test runs with 34 centuries, nine of them over 150, and averaged over 52 while often carrying a weak West Indies batting order. His high backlift and explosive strokeplay made even world-class attacks look ordinary; his 153 not out to beat Australia at Bridgetown in 1999 is regarded as one of the greatest match-winning innings ever played. Lara scored with a speed and audacity that set him apart from his contemporaries, and on his day no batsman was more capable of dominating a Test single-handedly.
The case for Kumar Sangakkara
Kumar Sangakkara was one of the most prolific and elegant batsmen of his era and a fine wicketkeeper for much of his career. The Sri Lankan left-hander scored 12,400 Test runs at 57.40 with 38 centuries, eleven of them over 150, and 14,234 ODI runs, the second-highest ODI tally ever. In the 2015 World Cup he became the only man to score four consecutive ODI hundreds. Sangakkara combined classical technique with a voracious appetite for big scores, and his double and triple hundreds anchored Sri Lanka's batting alongside Mahela Jayawardene, with whom he shared a record 624-run Test partnership in 2006. Articulate and cerebral off the field, he was equally commanding at the crease. Whether keeping wicket or purely batting, his run-scoring consistency across formats places him firmly among the greatest batsmen of the modern game.