Kumar Sangakkara: ‘Cricket was the panacea that healed us’

With English cricket engulfed in a bitter race row, Sri Lanka’s greatest run-scorer talks about growing up amid civil war and the sport’s power to unify.

Kumar Sangakkara’s life changed on March 6, 1996. Nearly two decades before he would retire from international cricket as one of the world’s finest batsmen and Sri Lanka’s most accomplished run-scorer, the 18-year-old sat in the stadium terraces in the hillside city of Kandy, a short walk from his childhood home, as the national team prepared to play Kenya in a group match of the Cricket World Cup…