Ganesh Balakrishnan

Sanath Jayasuriya scored more ODI runs than Brian Lara and took more ODI wickets than Shane Warne. He is the only cricketer in the history of the sport to score 10,000 runs and take 300 wickets in a single format. He sits fifth on the all-time ODI run list, above Lara, Kallis, Gilchrist, Jayawardene and Sehwag. I hope people never forget how good he was. He was one of a kind, a genuine unicorn. Look at the batting first. 13,430 runs from 445 matches, fifth on the all-time list, and every single name below him on it is one of the most celebrated batters who has ever lived. Read that list again. Lara. Kallis. Gilchrist. Jayawardene. Sehwag. All of them behind him. And with the ball, at exactly the same time, 323 ODI wickets at 36.75, with four five-wicket hauls and twelve four-fors. More than Warne, more than Vettori, more than Harbhajan, more than Saqlain. His best figures of 6 for 29 against England at Moratuwa in 1993 stood as the finest by any Sri Lankan in ODI history until Muralitharan finally beat them seven years later. But how rare is the double, really? Jacques Kallis is the most complete all-rounder of the modern era and he is the closest anybody has come, finishing with 11,579 runs and 273 wickets, short on the bowling side. Nobody else in the history of cricket, in any format, has managed both halves. Not one other human being. And then there is what he did to the sport itself. At the 1996 World Cup he scored 221 runs at a strike rate of 131.4, which even now, thirty years on, would raise eyebrows. He and Romesh Kaluwitharana simply decided to attack the first fifteen overs while the field was up, and within a few years every team on the planet had rebuilt its batting order around the idea. He was named Most Valuable Player of that tournament, and Wisden broke a long-standing tradition to name him one of its Five Cricketers of the Year. Ah, and btw, that same year he became the first cricketer in international history to reach a century in under fifty balls, getting there in 48 against Pakistan. Then Sharjah in 2000, which might be the most absurd innings anybody has played. Jayasuriya made 189 against India. That was 64% of Sri Lanka's entire total and 54% of every run scored in the whole match. India were then bowled out for 54, meaning one man outscored the entire opposition by 135 runs on his own. He finished with 100 ODI catches, a winning record as captain, 48 Man of the Match awards and 11 Player of the Series awards, both of them second only to Sachin Tendulkar in the whole history of one-day cricket. The real destructor. Nobody has done what he did, and nobody is close.