Title: IPL's about quality cricket, not money - Sangakkara

Desc:

Kumar Sangakkara holds the destiny of his country's cricket in his hands as he takes on his first assignment as captain in an official capacity. He also talks of his experience in the IPL, playing under Mahela Jayawardene and what Twenty20 cricket teaches you as a batsman

What are your views on the three formats of the game?
I think Test cricket will always remain No.1. There is no better testing ground for any player other than on a Test field. Every other format should support and enrich Test cricket. When you play Test cricket you are playing for a place in history and you're testing yourself in every single department of your game against the opposition. There is no better challenge than that.

Would you have preferred making your debut as captain in a Test match rather than a World Twenty20 tournament?
You really can't pick and choose can you? It's going to be a difficult challenge going into a World Cup as your first tour but you've got to learn the hard way. Just try and be sure that you are prepared as a side and as an individual to take up whatever comes your way. We've got a very well-balanced side, a great bowling attack and we just got to make sure the batting supports that.

What has Twenty20 cricket taught you?
Twenty20 cricket has opened the batsman's eyes as to what you can really do. It's put an end to the limitations being imposed upon ourselves, the cricketing community at large, the coaches and everyone. Those limitations have all disappeared. New shots, new innovations and run-scoring rates have all improved. You see a lot of batsmen coming down the track now even in Test cricket to fast bowlers, scoring at four plus runs an over, taking on spinners much more than they used to earlier. It's really enriched Test cricket. As long as players realise the importance of all formats of cricket and prioritise them rightly and the home boards and the ICC also make sure each country plays at least 10-12 matches a year, that's the way forward.

Has T20 cricket thrown text book cricket out of the window?
No. The importance of technique is highlighted even more. You build everything from that technical base. Having a technical base should never really restrict you. Upto now before the advent of T20 and the modern pre-1996 one-day cricket format, the players used the technical base as a restriction. Now when you have the right technique you free your mind up. There's a lot more that you can do with it.

Having played two IPL tournaments, what are the positives you have taken out of them?
Exposure of playing in that pressure cooker environment. Being responsible largely for your own performance and not being able to be one of the back because you are picked as an individual to be part of the team and that individual status has a lot of value in an IPL format. Twenty20 no doubt is going to be an important factor in every country's cricketing make up very soon. Hopefully, inspired by the performances on the field, a generation of cricketers will take up the game and look at new avenues to represent their country. At the end of the day what IPL really teaches you is forget the money, forget the glitz and the glamour. The value of that whole tournament hinges on the amount of quality cricket that people see on the field. If not for quality cricket, people won't come.

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