 Ajantha Mendis - the 'Mystery Man'
9th Jul 2008 23:01 IST
Manish Kumar
Ajantha Mendis, the new spin star on the cricketing horizon, has earned the sobriquet 'Mystery Man' for the incredible variety of deliveries he bowls.
Born in March 1985, Mendis hails from a hamlet in Moratuwa. He is the third child in a family of five with an elder brother and a sister. He has had his basic education at St Anthony's College at Kadalana in his village where there were no facilities at all for sports.
Mendis is the author of a new delivery - the Carrom Ball. Since the Doosra, the Carrom Ball is the latest addition to the cricket lexicon.
To bowl a "carrom ball" in cricket, the ball is held between the thumb, forefinger and the middle finger, and instead of a regular release, the ball is squeezed out/ flicked by the fingers like a Carrom player flicking the disc on a Carrom Board. It could result in an off-break, a leg-break, a googly or even a zooter.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni admitted that his side was unable to pick Mendis in the final of the Asia Cup. And it was not only the Indians who found difficult to handle Mendis.
Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene said he had been bowled a couple of times facing Mendis and that Kumar Sangakkara spent an hour a day in the nets before the tournament keeping to Mendis, trying to pick up his variations. It's one thing, Jayawardene said, to read him from the hand, another thing altogether to then play him off the pitch.
What makes Mendis' bowling even more special is that he bowls off-spin as his stock delivery and has few more variations in his armory - a leg spin, a top spin and a flipper. And it was Jayawardene's plan of not playing Mendis in the super-four stage of the tournament that paid dividends.
Mendis' exploits with the ball have earned him not only accolades but also a promotion in the Sri Lankan Army.
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