Ajantha Mendis

About Ajantha Mendis

Ajantha Mendis is an international cricketer from Sri Lanka, listed as a bowler. Career years: 2008 - 2015. Batting style: right-hand bat. Bowling style: right-arm offbreak. Date of birth: 1985-3-11. Career highlights — ODI: 188 runs at avg 8.17; T20I: 8 runs at avg 2.66. Explore complete career numbers, debut matches and match-by-match form below.

Ajantha Mendis biography

Ajantha Mendis reintroduced mystery to spin in the era of video analysts and super-slow-motion replays. Much like the original mystery spinner, Jack Iverson, and the other practitioner of the "Iversons", John Gleeson, Mendis stunned the world with his finger-flicked legbreaks. His Iversons came with a new name, the "carrom ball", taken from the way the striker is flicked in the popular board game in the subcontinent.

His first, most famous, and most comprehensive victims were the most prolific middle order of his time: Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly. Following closely on the heels of a six-for in the 2008 Asia Cup final against India's ODI side, Mendis made a sensational Test debut. He took eight wickets in his first Test and 26 in his first series, two more than Alec Bedser's record for a three-match debut series at the time.

The early success was built as much on his variations - offbreaks, topspinners, carrom balls, googlies, ones that did nothing - as it was on accuracy and Muttiah Muralitharan's company. As the mystery wore, though, much like with Iverson and Gleeson, the world caught up with him, and Mendis failed to live up to the early promise. By the time Murali retired, Mendis was not ready to take over as the leading Sri Lankan spinner, a vast change from when he could have emerged as the leading spinner in the world.

Mendis continued to be an effective spinner in shorter formats where batters didn't have much time to adjust. During the 2012 T20 World Cup, he set the record for best innings figures, with 6 for 8 against Zimbabwe, and finished as the tournament's leading wicket-taker as Sri Lanka reached the final. But when they finally won the trophy in 2014, Mendis took only four wickets from three games. He played his last international match, an ODI in Christchurch, a year later, going wicketless at nearly ten an over.