Mathews' 10,000-run regret

From his Under-19 days, Angelo Mathews was a player marked out for greatness. There was never a flicker of doubt. In those early years, many likened him to a young Jacques Kallis, or perhaps more fittingly, an Ian Botham — brisk with the ball and capable of landing hefty blows in the lower middle order. Kumar Sangakkara, ever the astute judge of talent, saw what Mathews could bring to the table. So much so that in his very first Test as captain, he ensured Mathews was handed his debut. By the time Sanga passed the baton, it was clear as daylight that Mathews was his natural heir.

- BY REX CLEMENTINE

Yet, it wasn’t with the ball that Mathews carved his name in stone. It was with the bat — as a rock in the middle order — that he truly made his mark. Repeated muscle injuries clipped his wings as an all-rounder, but he reinvented himself with single-minded focus. And to his credit, he walked the talk — finishing as Sri Lanka’s third highest run-scorer in Test cricket, tucked behind the twin colossi: Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene.

Ask any of his early coaches and they'll tell you — Mathews overachieved with the bat. He didn’t bat with silk gloves like Sanga or paint pictures like Mahela. There were no flowing cover drives or balletic foot-work. If batting were poetry, his verse was blunt, but brutally effective. He was not one for the gallery, but always there when the team needed a firefighter.

If he got a start, he knew how to kick on. He played the long game — left deliveries on a string, milked the bowling dry, and then cashed in when it was in his arc. He turned survival into an art and pragmatism into profit.