great speech by kumar sangakkara

tsubaki · July 6, 2011

Apologies if you lot have seen this already, but if you have a spare hour or two this is well worth a listen. He was giving the annual Cowdrey lecture at the MCC.

Suddenly Mahela, who sits at the back of the bus, shouts saying he thinks he has been hit in the shin. I am lying next to Tilan. He groans in pain as a bullet hits him in the back of his thigh. As I turn my head to look at him I feel something whizz past my ear and a bullet thuds into the side of the seat, the exact spot where my head had been a few seconds earlier.

I feel something hit my shoulder and it goes numb. I know I had been hit, but I was just relieved and praying I was not going to be hit in the head. Tharanga Paranvithana, on his debut tour, is also next to me. He stands up, bullets flying all around him, shouting 'I have been hit' as he holds his blood-soaked chest. He collapsed on to his seat, apparently unconscious.

I see him and I think: 'Oh my God, you were out first ball, run out the next innings and now you have been shot. What a terrible first tour.'

http://www.lords.org/latest-news/news-archive/sangakkara-delivers-cowdrey-lecture,2024,NS.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jul/05/the-spin-kumar-sangakkara