Saturday, April 12, 2008

Visual Proof of Ajantha Mendis' Trickery

Thanks to some great insight from Q below I went on to youtube to check out one of the most exciting young spinners on the scene - Ajantha Mendis. He comes from a shortened medium pacer like runup, shows the batsmen the ball in a Malcom Marshall like way and then spins his magic. I saw him bowl googlies, offspinners, top spinners and doosras (that actually spin the other way) in the highlights reel

Not everyone can access youtube, so I took a small image capture which shows Mendis bowling a googly on the left, an offspinner in the middle and a top spinner or doosra on the right


Make your pitch on this post...



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9 Pitched:

  1. David Barry said...
     

    Cool, thanks for that Obaid. It looks like he spins his legbreak/wrong'un off his middle finger. I can't see that he could get huge turn from leg to off like that (not that all bowlers need big turn, of course). It's the clever thing for him to do though, otherwise he'd be giving away information to the batsman from his grip.

  2. Gaurav Sethi said...
     

    the ball that got a windies tailender, a Trojan acc to Bishop, was Mendis' version of Steyn b Dravid Ahmedabad. Mendis is a trip.

  3. obaid said...
     

    yes that's right, he doesnt get huge spin off the doosra, NC, the tail ended dismissal you mention pitched on middle off and took the outside edge of off stump. And that's a wicked delivery - not crazy spin but just enough to get an lb, edge or bowl out.

    I also saw highlights of him bowl in a domestic game where he bowled a lot of well flighted googlies to left handers

  4. Q said...
     

    Yep that was a total steyn delivery to Dravid. He got Darren Sammy with it.

    David, its not a conventional leg spinner's grip...he used his middle finger for the leg break and flipper.

    Its quite amazing that he manages to control his length with a delivery literally delivered with the fingers with no palm involved ...

  5. Arjun said...
     

    Ya he's a good bowler. Actually, a lot of people are interested in the SL-WI series, especially to see the man Chanderpaul in action!

  6. Q said...
     

    Chanderpaul was in full flow last night as well... his sequence of 4644 was quite amazing how he took to the attack unlike himself.

    The Windies chased down the total easily. Good to c them come through..

  7. Arjun said...
     

    Yeah I noticed that. It's funny how he's branded as a slow test player with strokeplay of that quality. He was moving all over the pitch and jumping in position to disorient the bowler. And it worked.

  8. David Barry said...
     

    Arjwiz, Chanderpaul is usually pretty slow by modern standards. In the last ten years in ODI's, he's below the median strike rate for batsmen with 1000 runs. In Tests (same qualification) he's in the bottom quartile.

  9. Anonymous said...
     

    YES HE IS GOOD BOWLER . NO DOUBT ! BUT HE HAS TO PROVE IN COMING YEAR...AS HE PLAYS MORE CRICKET..BATS MAN TENDS TO UNDER STAND HIS ACTION AND DELIVERIES...THATS WER WE CAN DIFFERENTIATE GOOD AND BEST BOWLERS..FOR EX : HARBHAJAN.. HE WAS SAID TO BE KBETTER THAN KUMBLE ..NOW EVERY ONE PICKS HIS EASILY...NARENDRA HIRWANI,MONTY PENESAR..LIKE LOT OF...ONLY MURALI,SHANE WARNE AND VETTORI SURVIVED....LET S SEE HOW HE ADJUSTS TO ENVIRONMENT.

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