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Sangakkara calls time on first-class career

Sri Lanka legend to call time on first-class career after his current stint with Surrey

Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara has revealed he will retire from first-class cricket at the end of the present English County Championship season in September.

The 39-year-old, who is fifth in the list of all-time Test run scorers averaging more than 57 runs in 134 Tests, making 11 double centuries, is still in prime form, having scored two centuries for Surrey in their match with Middlesex which finished on Monday.

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However, Sangakkara - also one of the all-time great limited overs batsmen and a member of the Sri Lanka side that reached both the 2007 and 2011 World Cup finals (losing to Australia and India respectively) - said he could sense the time was right to retire. 

"You try to fight the inevitable but you need to get out while you're ahead," Sangakkara, who was a pivotal member of the Sri Lanka team that lifted the 2014 World Twenty20 trophy and lost in both the 2009 and 2012 finals, told the BBC.

"It's the last time I'll play a four-day game here. I'll be 40 in a few months, this is about the end of my time in county cricket."

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Sangakkara, who formed a swashbuckling partnership on many occasions with fellow Sri Lankan legend Mahela Jayawardene, said he didn't want to make the error of overstaying his welcome.

"The biggest mistake that sometimes you can make is that you think you're better than you really are," he said.

"Cricketers, or any sort of sportsperson, have an expiry date and you need to walk away.

"I have been very lucky to play for as long as I did so but there's a lot more life to be lived away from the game."

Last week, the Marylebone Cricket Club unveiled a recently commissioned portrait of Sangakkara and fellow Test star Mahela Jayawardena at Lord’s.

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The two paintings went on display in the Lord's Pavilion on the opening day of the clash between Middlesex and Surrey, hanging alongside portraits of fellow greats including Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Viv Richards at the Home of Cricket.

"I was humbled when I was asked to sit for the portrait commissioned by MCC," Sangakkara said in a Marylebone Cricket Club statement.

"It is a great honour to be on the walls (at Lord's). 

"I wanted to know how I would be represented through Antony's eyes; not just my expressions or my physical appearance but how he would interpret me as a whole. 

"Having seen the final portrait, I was so very pleasantly surprised, unnerved and a bit embarrassed seeing myself in a frame on canvas but thoroughly happy with the work done."