India / Sri Lanka

Ajantha Mendis sorts everything out

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Ajantha Mendis MESSING WITH YOUR MINDSanath Jayasuriya might have pummelled a trademark hundred, but Ajantha Mendis won Sri Lanka the Asia Cup.

If you want to see some impressive bowling figures, read on: 6-13 off eight overs. Virender Sehwag had hit a 26-ball fifty when Mendis came on to bowl, so the young spinner basically just flat-out won the match.

Having one baffling, unconventional, once-in-a-generation spinner would be enough for most nations, but not Sri Lanka. They have to have two. Greedy swines.

Ajantha Mendis bowls ‘spin’. He’s not bound by petty distinctions like that between off-spin and leg-spin. He bowls everything.

He bowls everything and then has the face-slapping audacity to add another delivery – the carrom ball.

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Similar deliveries:

Default ThumbnailAjantha Mendis to make his Test debut Default ThumbnailKusal Mendis has played an innings Default ThumbnailSanath Jayasuriya bowing out in style Default ThumbnailSri Lankan tactics

12 comments

  1. Jingoism aside, I’m not sure about Mendis being The Next Big Thing. Various people have been writing about him being similar to Kumble, in that he doesn’t turn it a lot so will get easier to play once batsmen have got used to him.

    Mind you, “he could be another Kumble” isn’t exactly an insult!

    Mendis doesn’t seem to disguise the ball out of the hand much, either. And in this age of super-slow-mo’ video replays, he’s going to be subjected to much scrutiny.

    Fingers crossed, he’ll be bloody fantastic. But I’m not going to jump any bandwagons ’til he’s played a bit of Test cricket.

  2. I don’t understand the rules to ‘Carrom’ so I’m going to call his new type of delivery the ‘Subbuteo’.

  4. Jrod, I do have a blog…but haven’t updated it for about four months. I’m a pretty rubbish blogger, and tend not to write about cricket anyway!

    Carrom’s acetastic! Not played in years, ever since my parents’ board got warped…but might see if I can get hold of one from somewhere. Think of it as billiards/pool but flicking a puck rather than hitting a cue ball — as with pool, there are all sorts of variations that you can play.

    As always, there’s more on Wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrom

  6. And just thing, if Mendis were English he’d have anything remotely unorthodox about his bowling coached out of him by now.

  7. He and Murali and Malinga and probably Jayasuriya as well.

    Someone get some English coaches over to Sri Lanka before the next Test series.

  9. A Sri Lanka tour AND the Ashes? AWESOME!

    Might see if I can make it to Derby and Chester-le-Street. And a bunch of us have even hatched a “fun” dressing-up plan for the Saturday of the Headingley Ashes Test. If we can get tickets, that is.

    *chuffed*

  10. Brilliant, not only do we get no Zimbabwe, we get the Lankans instead? Fantastic news.

  11. Mahinda, I KNOW! It’s the awesomest! I’m going to see if I can get tickets for the Lords Sri Lanka Test.

    Anyone else who was thinking of getting tickets for the Lords Test, don’t bother, it’ll be boring, you’ll hate it.

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