Ajantha Mendis

A typical 143 question!

 

Mendis has had a good and promising start to his career and if he is groomed properly with Murali then he might turn into a huge success story.

batsmen of any standard pick doosras or they can ,may be , but the fact is is  its not easy for batsman of any standard to respond to some wiered bowling like that...probably they could suss him out watching video tapes or anything and he will have to keep evolving his bowling with constant experimentation and no surity of success for anyone in this game, nevertheless there should not be any denying of the fact that he did bowl very well ...you may say that they were too agressive and lost wickets playing extravaggant shots of him but still he was the one begging those top four wickets and that too when the powerplays were on, add also that most of them were bowled , stump or lbw that means he simply beat them all with his line and length on a batsman friendly pitch.

 

It's similar to Left Arm Spinners that slip in a chinaman in once in a while. It messes with a batsman's head because they have doubt of how you're going to spin the ball.

Finger spin and Wrist spin have different rates of revolutions and different amounts of turn so being able to bowl both means a batsman can't settle to how much a pitch is turning for you.

 

You're also forgetting the ability he'll have to bluff opponents. He bowls you some off breaks, then bowls what looks like a leg break and the batsman plays for the leg break to be bowled by what's really a wrong'un. Good bluff.

Or he bowls a leggies top spinner and it goes straight on going through the gap and taking out off stump.

 

This guy is something special in the making. I think he knows his game well enough to know that if he's getting slogged and has to revert to simplicity rather than loads of variation, then he'll be able to.

Until he actually starts getting slogged though we'll never know.

 

His Doosra is actually a reverse finger delivery which means there's a time just before he bowls that he has to set his fingers up for it, if done in run up. To do it you carry out the finger spin bowling action while in run up keeping hold of the ball and then move the fingers back the opposite way while releasing the ball on delivery. This creates like a 2 fingered leg break/chinaman and causes the ball to turn that way.

 

It'll be picked soon because of his altered finger position and the reversing of the fingers (providing he does it in run up as I have done when bowling reverse fingered deliveries).

If he sets up for it before then he'll cause more problems for himself as he gives a batsman more time to see the finger positions and predict what's coming.

 

Using the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL9-D-Hp2GI (also provided above) stop it at 30 seconds. It shows his action from behind just before release. You can see the difference in his finger position (mainly that his index finger is higher and the ring and little finger are extended for his Doosra).

Not easy to pick for certain but over time it'll get picked more due to his finger position difference. Still, that's a delivery that's very clever and takes plenty of practice to bowl it well. I think that and a good undercutter/arm ball can make a good Offy or LAS.

 

I did exactly dat,