Ajantha Mendis... what a performer he has turned out to be

After making his debut in the West Indies, Ajantha Mendis was more of a curiosity what with his unusual bowling style and mysterious deliveries, like the newly coined Carom ball. However, after the Asia Cup, he has become a focal point of world cricket. Not just of his uniqueness, now because of his stunning performances.

To take 6 for 13 in the first big match final of his career, against no less than India, one of the best spin-playing sides in the world, was an amazing feat. Coming into the attack in the 10th over, at a time when the match was slipping away from Sri Lanka, Ajantha bowled with courage, incredible skill and great intelligence.No matter what variation a bowler possesses, if he cannot use those variations intelligently, if he cannot pitch the ball consistently on an accurate line and length, if he cannot stay one step ahead of the batsmen in his thinking, more often than not he’ll be a blunt weapon. Ajantha, at that crucial time, displayed the fact that he is well-aware of what it takes to be a bowling spearhead.

His control of his variations is impressive. He is very accurate, and because he pitches the ball so consistently where he wants to, it adds a lot more pressure on the batsman, who is anyway struggling to read him. Moreover, Ajantha showed he has great confidence in his ability – indeed, an abundance of self-confidence – and that he is augmenting his bowling with the strength of character and intelligent thinking.

Most bowlers take a while to adjust to international cricket, as they have to come to terms with the pressures and the required skills to perform in situations that could make or break a team’s chances. Ajantha, though, has settled into the top flight with remarkable ease.

Ajantha is naturally aggressive in his bowling style. He has no fear of setting fields. He challenges the batsmen to come out of their comfort zone, thereby making the batsman’s task, which is already hard because of his variation, doubly difficult. Moreover, during the last two years of seeing him develop, facing him regularly in the nets, I can see that his bowling has improved tremendously.

Bowlers of this unique nature, who have come through the ranks of Sri Lanka’s cricket unannounced and unheralded, could have advantages as well as disadvantages. The disadvantages can be that the lack of coaching and media attention would mean that he would have had to have develop most of his bowling skills and variations and thinking patterns on his own. To do that in a manner that is beneficial to your career is difficult without any guidance.

The advantage could be that the challenge of self-development would force him to bring a lot of his own individuality into his skill and psychological make-up. The other advantages would be that along the way he has not been victim of rigid, tunneled-vision coaching that would have rid him of his uniqueness and made him into another run-of-the-mill bowler.

Ajantha seems to have come through in his own quiet manner with perhaps the right coaching and guidance coming at a time when he is mature enough to use that to liberate himself from orthodox convention and limitations to become the newest cricketing sensation.

While people talk of his six different variations, his mystery deliveries, his amazingly complicated method of delivery, when I keep to him behind the stumps I see simplicity. I see a simple cricketer with, of course, slightly more variation than normal adhering to age-old basics of bowling, of running in and bowling a ball on the right line and length, to the field that has been set, and asking of the batsman the question: are you good enough to keep playing the ball and not get out?

All the great bowlers of the world, no matter how unorthodox or how brilliant they are, have this one basic thing in common: the ability to pitch the ball where they want to. I have watched Muttiah Muralitharan through the years and he – someone who people may think needs to work least on his bowling – spends the most amount of time with a single wicket set-up with a mark on a good length going through hours of spot bowling.

Mendis’s enthusiasm, his obvious joy in playing the game, is infectious. It shows that he will not settle to be just what he is today. He wants to keep improving to become a better and more complete bowler. His challenge over the next years would be the fact that batsmen with time will get accustomed to his variation. They will work out new methods and strategies to counter him.

For any cricketer, their first year in international cricket is the easiest year. They are unknown, unheard of, and that tends to mean that the opposition is not focused too much upon you. Every single year you spend playing international cricket, staying ahead of the game and improving becomes harder and harder.

A cricketer who is playing his tenth year, I believe, has to work much harder than in his previous years to keep improving his game. This is going to be Ajantha’s challenge. However, having played with him now for a few months in the same team, having witnessed first-hand who he is as a person and how he bonds with his team-mates, having seen his character, his approach to the game and above all his skill, I am in no doubt that he has all the ingredients to achieve every bowlers’ dream: to be recognised by his peers and the larger cricketing fraternity as being among the all-time greats. .