Kumar Sangakkara scored 12,400 Test runs, including 38 centuries, in a 15-year career playing for Sri Lanka. His latest hundred, however, came at a village ground in Dorset, on the south coast of England, where he sent sixes soaring into the car park.To reach Witchampton Cricket Club, visitors — on this occasion, Shillingstone CC and their star batter — must travel up a track beside the local nursery school. Philippa Bowles, a player’s mother, prepared the snacks and drinks for the teams to recharge during the tea interval, and a 14-year-old shared the field with the former Sri Lanka captain, now aged 48.Sangakkara’s route into pay-to-play village cricket, where amateurs hand over a match fee, runs through the school his children attend, a friendship spanning 25 years and a village pub brought back from closure.More than 50 people watched from the boundary on the day The Athletic visits, including Nicholas Berry, 53, who coaches the Witchampton women’s team and had never seen Sangakkara bat in person. He had been due on stage that afternoon, singing and playing the ukulele and guitar, and says his bandmates were not best pleased when he pulled out after discovering Sangakkara would be playing.“I’ve got another gig tomorrow, so that’s fine,” Berry says. “Today is about watching Kumar play cricket.”Nicholas Berry could barely believe he was watching a Test cricket legend (Amelie Claydon/The Athletic)Children from Witchampton’s junior section ate ice lollies beside the boundary. Some did not know who Sangakkara was, so the adults explained his stature in football terms: imagine Lionel Messi turning out for a Sunday League team. Berry thought even that comparison undersells it.“This is bigger than that,” he says. “It’s like Pele.”A day with Kumar Sangakkara in village cricketAmelie ClaydonA few appeals for leg before wicket prompted murmurs among the spectators. One warned that an umpire would need to be “more than 100 per cent certain” before giving Sangakkara out.The caution was understandable. Sangakkara captained Sri Lanka, remains the country’s leading Test run-scorer and is the only player to make four consecutive centuries in one-day internationals. He later served as president of Marylebone Cricket Club, based at Lord’s — the stadium known worldwide as ‘The home of cricket’.Berry had watched that career unfold on television and says he was close to tears when they posed for a photograph outside the pavilion.“The elegance, poise and grace are still there,” Berry says. “He has so much time on the ball. It’s just the same, which makes it even better.”Sangakkara’s explanation for playing for Shillingstone is less grand.“All my friends play for Shillies,” he says. “If you want to be part of the community, you need to turn up once in a while and play for the village team.“It’s great fun — making friends, going to the pub in the evening and chatting. It’s never about just coming in and playing cricket. It’s more about being part of the community and the friendships that are built.”That connection began with a family decision.Sangakkara and wife Yehali moved permanently to England in early 2022 after choosing a co-educational school for their twins, who were 13 at the time and are now 17.“We went around a lot of schools,” he says. “We decided that was the school for us, so we moved to Dorset because of the school.”The twins do not play cricket and Dad has never tried to push them towards the sport. “They’ve chosen their own paths,” he says. “They’re very happy doing what they do.”