How Muttiah Muralitharan gave teammate Kumar Sangakkara sleepless nights

Muttiah Muralitharan gave batsmen around the world nightmares during his 19-year international cricket career.

However, opposition batsmen were not the only ones who had sleepless nights because of Muralitharan. His long-time Sri Lanka teammate and one of the best batsmen of the modern era, Kumar Sangakkara, too suffered similar anxiety, albeit for a different reason.

Revealing one of his teammate’s quirky habits during the third season of popular online show What The Duck, Sangakkara, when asked about his experience sharing a room with Muralitharan, said the spinner would wake him up in the middle of the night to watch cartoons on TV.

“He loves his TV. I love it too, but Murali will wake me up from my sleep to watch cartoons. I used to play along at first. But then even though I’m pretending to be sleeping, he will call out to me and make sure I watch the cartoon along with him. So I get up and have to keep watching cartoons with him in the room,”

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Muralitharan shared Sangakkara’s habit of not keeping cricket trophies with him. The wicketkeeper-batsman would either throw them away or give them away, revealed the spin legend.

“He collects things and he loves doing that. He will collect watches, whiskeys and all the drinks. But the only thing he doesn’t like collecting is trophies.

“He throws them away or gives it to people. He doesn’t have a single trophy. All of them have been given away to people,” the 46-year-old said.

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The duo shared other interesting anecdotes from their playing careers as well while talking to show host Vikram Sathaye. The show will soon be aired on YouTube.

Muralitharan and Sangakkara played a key role in helping Sri Lanka become a force to reckon with in international cricket.

With a tally of 800 Test and 534 ODI wickets, Muralitharan is world’s most successful bowler in both formats.

Sangakkara is regarded as one of the all-time batting greats with a tally of 12,400 Test and 14,234 ODI runs.